The consumption of alcohol can take a serious toll on anyone. Everyone is affected in different ways by it depending on your body. When an officer suspects that a person has been driving they begin assessing the person from the very moment they spot them. They view their capability of driving and once they have pulled them over they can assess their behavior and appearance. Some people can handle more alcohol without being affected by it so it is important to know what you personally can consume before becoming too impaired to drive.

Since one person may have a drink and be fine to drive while another person has the same drink and is left impaired, police have looked to another means to determine the level of intoxication in a person. One of the ways they have been able to do this is by testing the blood alcohol content level of a person, known as their BAC.This tests the amount of alcohol in their blood stream at the time. It can be calculated in a number of ways such as testing the breath, blood or urine of a person.

When an officer is on the scene the most common way they will test this is through the breath of a person. This is not as accurate as a blood test and is more of an estimate. They will use a device that the person blows into and it reads the amount of alcohol in their breath and computes it into how much alcohol they have in their blood stream. In the United States the legal limit a person can legally drive with is under .08 percent. Anyone with a BAC level this high or higher can be taken into custody for a DUI.

This is the limit that has been legally determined that a person is too impaired to be operating a vehicle at.Under each different level a person can often experience different symptoms and effects. When a person is under .01 percent they can appear normal and may only have a slight impairment that would only be noticed through testing. When they reach .02 there may begin to be some loss of judgment, a relaxed feeling, a decrease in inhibition and it can begin to affect their driving by reducing their attention.

After a person gets up to .05 percent they can have impaired judgment, can lose some of the control of their small muscles and will often have exaggerated behavior. On the road they may experience a reduction of their reaction to an emergency and a lowering of their coordination. Once their BAC has gone up to .08 percent a person will have trouble judging situations, reasoning, determining danger and coordinating their muscles. While driving they can experience short term memory loss, difficulty processing information, general impairment including their perception and more.At .10 they can become emotional, loud, and extremely expressive. They can have trouble controlling reflexes, motor control, reacting at the right time and can start to stagger.

Above .15 they will experience a severe loss of muscle control, loss of balance and loss of understanding. They can lose their memory and may even lose consciousness. At .30 percent their central nervous system can become affected by experiencing depression. Their heart rate can change and there is the chance of death. Anything above this is highly intoxicated and in danger of death. Those that reach these levels of intoxication should seek medical attention. It is important to understand what affects will happen at each BAC level and how you are personally affected by it.