Dr. Barbara Banz recently presented research findings at the 64th Annual Scientific Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. The study titled, "Alcohol use patterns and their association with sober driver vehicle control in high fidelity driving simulation," shows associations of alcohol use history and drinking patterns with a driver's ability to control their vehicle when they are driving sober.
The study findings, published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, show that the AUDIT score, a survey measure of alcohol use patterns, and responses to individual AUDIT questions, among sober drivers, is associated with with vehicle control measures during high fidelity driving simulation. In all, the results present two key themes: 1) a need to further integrate alcohol use metrics with high-fidelity driving simulation studies to understand how drinking experience can relate to driver behavior and vehicle control and 2) the opportunity to integrate clinical perspectives with driving simulation research to strengthen clinically oriented alcohol-misuse prevention efforts.