Alcohol-Induced Degradation of Performance on Simulated Driving Tasks

Using the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory Driving Simulator, performance on position maintenance (lane-keeping), speed maintenance, and reaction time was measured for 159 subjects as they passed through various levels of intoxication over a 7 h period. Using normalized scores for each individual subject to correct for idiosyncratic extreme behaviors, significant correlations were found between Breathalyzer readings and performance on each of the simulated driving tasks. Significant correlations were also found between each pair of simulated driving task measures.