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Drinking and driving

Drinking alcohol reduces your ability to drive safely. Alcohol affects your judgement, vision, coordination and reflexes—increasing your risk of having a crash.

Alcohol can:

  • make it hard for you to concentrate on driving
  • slow down your reaction time
  • reduce your ability to do more than one thing at a time
  • affect your vision and hearing
  • make you feel more confident, which may lead you to take unnecessary risks
  • relax you, increasing your chances of falling asleep while driving
  • make simple tasks more difficult.

If you have consumed alcohol, it is against the law to drive a vehicle if the level of alcohol in your blood or breath is over the alcohol limit for the licence you hold or the vehicle that you want to drive.

Read about the legal alcohol limits, the penalties for drink driving and how to drink responsibly.

 

Last updated
11 November 2012

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