According to the article, Kwang-il Kwon and his colleagues at Chungnam National University in Daejeon, South Korea, did the experiment to test how dissolved oxygen in alcohol drink helps drinkers to recover after getting drunk faster. They found that in normal case the alcohol levels in volunteers’ blood reached zero within five hours whereas those whose drinks enriched 20 and 25 parts per milliliters of oxygen decreased to zero 23 and 27 minutes faster than those whose drinks enriched 8 ppm of oxygen respectively. From this outcome, they expected that "The reduced time to a lower blood-alcohol concentration may reduce alcohol-related accidents,"(¶4) However, they still concerned that this way would not lead people to drink more.
In my opinion, I agree with this method. It might help to reduce the number of car accident caused by drunks. This is because if people can be sober faster after getting drunk, they will have a consciousness to drive them home carefully without any accident. I think most people who like to drink alcohol just want to have fun with their friends and get drunk for a while. If they can choose between conscious driving and unconscious driving. Most people will choose the former one for sure. However, they cannot wait until they’re sober for the whole night. Therefore, they need to drive while getting drunk which is an extremely bad behavior. However, some people might disagree with this method because they’re afraid that it will lead drinkers drink more which results in many worse situations. I quite disagree with this because I think most drinkers don’t think about this point while they’re drinking alcohol. They just drink as much as they want. Moreover, this way cannot encourage people who don’t drink to drink it. Therefore, this might be another effective way that can help to reduce the number of car accident caused by drunks.
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References
Adding oxygen to booze speeds sobriety. (2010, March 6). NewScientist. Retrieved March 8, 2010 from http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527503.200-adding-oxygen-to-booze-speeds-sobriety.html
It is really effective way to reduce car accident and the situations which drinkers do when they don't have consciousness, such as rape and murder. I think it increases choices for drinker because some drinkers just want to hang out with friends; if they drink the new alcohol, they will not get drunk too long. If they want to get drunk to forget something, they can choose the old kind of alcohol.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it would work to reduce accidents. On the contrary, I would predict that it would increase the number of car accidents caused by alcohol, which is far teh most deadly and socially harmful drug that people use - much worse than many illegal drugs.
ReplyDeleteIt reminded me of the bright idea some people had to teach how to drive well in schools in order to reduce car accidents amongst the young, who have significantly more traffic accidents than older drivers. It sounds like a good idea; it just doesn't work. The statistics show that such educational efforts result in an increase in traffic accidents amongst the young who have had them. Education is not the answer to all problems, and I don't think that modifying alcohol in the way suggested is likely to be much of a cure for alcohol related problems in society. More strict drink driving laws are likely to prove more effective. And banning teh sale of alcohol at certain times or places is an equally bad idea that seems to be a total failure in Thailand and other nations where it has been adopted as government policy.
Drink driving seems to me to be an area where people do seem to perform something like a cost-benefit analysis and decide that the risk is so small that it's not worth not drinking and then driving. Perhaps there is also in internal moral mechanism that could be stimulated to reduce the curse of drink driving - which is what I always associate with Songkran.