Out of curiosity I googled the highest recorded BAC and found that someone was once admitted to an American hospital with a BAC of 0.74. How he lived long enough to get to the emergency room, I’ve no idea, considering 0.50 is usually lethal.
But the site provided a link that claims a German motorist was stopped with a BAC of 4.46. :eek:
I may have an imperfect understanding of what the BAC indicates. I thought it was decimals of a percent (i.e. 0.10 means one tenth of a percent). Did that dude really have four and a half percent alcohol in his blood, or is it figured differently in Germany? The link also states that the legal limit in that location is 0.50, what would actually kill a person.
Is 4.5% BAC even possible?
In Europe, BAC is measured in one-tenth of a percent.
Interestingly, nearly every major European language except English seems to have a word for that unit of measurement (something like “promille” meaning “one-thousandth”, compare “percent” meaning “one-hundredth”).
So the BAC of 4.46 reported in Germany would be 0.446 for you.
Also, it’s important to realize that a BAC of 0.50 doesn’t result in instant death. With practice it’s possible to tolerate much higher BACs.
[anecdote]As part of my paramedic clinicals, we did a rotation in detox. One patient was brought in by police, talking normally and walking under his own power. His BAC was 0.498![/anecdote]
English has per mil: ‰. It just isn’t used much. Doctors use milligrams/deciliter, which is parts per 100,000, more or less. BTW, if he really were at 4.5%, his blood would have been as strong as beer! Well, probably not German beer.
<physics T.A.> Units, people, units! </physics T.A.>
Numbers are meaningless unless they have units and other necessary contextual information.
That makes a bit more sense for it to be .446%. What a pansy. He couldn’t even get a 0.5. Go America! We’re Number One!!
About 13 years ago I responded to a call of a youth passed out on a lawn. It turned out to be a 15 year old who slammed an entire litre of Jack Daniels. His BAC turned out to be .54 :eek:
He lived.