The per mille slider
01/27/2018
Unfortunately, it is difficult to find out when this now completely obsolete "SFA-Promille-Schieber" came onto the market. I suspect it was in the seventies.
At least back then it was still allowed to drive with up to 0.8 per mille. Today, in Switzerland you reach the limit at 0.5 per mille (new drivers 0.0 per mille), in other countries, mainly in the Eastern Bloc, such as Hungary, alcohol is completely banned, expressed in per mille 0.0! Even the red wine sauce could become a problem. The card correctly shows that the blood alcohol concentration is not only influenced by the amount of alcohol consumed, but also in particular by body weight and gender. It is not noted on the card that the decisive factor is whether the drink is consumed on an empty stomach or with food. The card also states on the back: Alcohol makes you carefree.
Some people think they drive even better when they have been drinking. But appearances are deceptive. At a young age, people may not want to admit the problem, even though it is clearly there.
So many years ago, we started our own test at an indoor karting track. The four of us drove the first stint sober and then started drinking, no "coma drinking", just a few beers. In between, we drove a lap again and again, and of course we compared our telemetry data, i.e. lap times, at the end and lo and behold they got massively worse. We also bumped into the barriers much more often than on the first run, which clearly showed that our driving precision had deteriorated massively.
Incidentally, alcohol breaks down very slowly in the blood: around 0.15 per mille per hour. This means, for example: If you go to bed at one o'clock in the morning with 1.8 per mille, you will still get up at seven o'clock with about 0.9 per mille. If you want to protect yourself and those around you and avoid stress with the police and authorities, it is by far the best thing to drink only water or to be chauffeured.
