How to determine if a 6’1" inch male, weighing 190 was under the influence of alcohol after drinking 4 draft beers (16 oz budlight) in the space of 3 hours? Are there graphs out there? I can’t find any.
What do you mean by “under the influence of alcohol”?
If he drank some, yes he was. To what degree is another matter, though; I would be amazed if someone became drunk after four bud lights in 3 hours unless they’d never drunk before.
What are you looking for more specifically? Whether said person is over a driving limit?
.071%
Someone of that size should fit the following general formula fairly well. It applies to most normal sized adults.
1 standard drink = One 12 oz regular beer, one 5 oz glass of wine, or one shot of 80 proof hard liquor.
Each standard drink increases blood alcohol content by .02. The body metabolizes 1 standard drink per hour.
Your friend’s drinks were 16 oz but they were also light beer which has 4.2% alcohol content as opposed to 5% for regular Bud. It is still close to 4 standard drinks.
If he drank them all at once, he would have been just at the legal driving limit of .08. However, he drank them over 3 hours so you subtract .06 BOL leaving .02 BOL at the end.
That is not under the influence by any reasonable definition and he would be legal to drive anywhere in the U.S. at any time while drinking just based on BOL.
Untrue. There are people for whom ‘zero consumption’ rules apply. Usually those under the legal drinking age, and also people on probation/parole for alcohol and drug-related offenses fall into this category.
Also, inexperienced drinkers would definitely be at risk for physical impairment, or ‘being under the influence’ even at those lower blood alcohol levels.
IANALEO
Well, you could try a standard ‘field sobriety’ test, like LEO’s employ during traffic stops.
Here’s a link to a site that describes a fairly standard FST. (SFW)
http://www.fieldsobrietytests.org/
IIRC the rough ‘guide’ of 12 ounces of beer per hour, is about the maximum someone can drink without becoming intoxicated. (<.08% BAC) YMMV
I just meant that the person wouldn’t get in trouble from a breathalyzer test based on normal driving laws alone. I know you can get a DUI at a lower BOL than .08 if the person has a strong response to low quantities of alcohol. I have seen people that had no business driving after two wine coolers for instance.
Someone I know was tasked with drinking a measured volume of alcohol in a set amount of time and acting as a subject in training some police officers for conducting field sobriety tests. The officers had to distinguish between the drinkers and the non-drinkers after the tests. He said the experienced officers could always spot the drinkers using the horizontal nystagmus test. The follow the pen thing.
There’s another online calculator here. I’ve which estimates that his blood alcohol content would’ve been 0.074%. If that’s right he would’ve still been legal to drive in the UK and most of the US, where the drink drive limit is usually 0.08%. In continental Europe it’s usually 0.05% and in New York it’s 0.04%, so in those places he would probably have been over the limit. It can be affected by lots of different things, including his body fat percentage, his metabolism, whether and what he’d eaten and his tolerance for alcohol. If he has a slow metabolism, was eating a meal with the beers and tends to drink a lot in general, he might have barely felt it at all; and conversely, if those factors go the other way the beers could have affected him a lot.
.074 is the blood alcohol level if he drank it all at once which he didn’t. You have to know the exact pattern of drinking over the time period involved to calculate the peak level but he was metabolizing 1 standard drink an hour or .02 BOL during that time as well. It is quite possible he never went over 0.04 either.
Yes, I meant for driving purposes - these answers are what I needed! thank you
Gonna tell us why you needed the info? I’m picturing an “I TOLD you you shouldn’t drive!” scenario. Or is there a juicier story?
If male, the phrase “Hey, watch this!”. Also “Hey, let’s…!”
If female, the utterance “WOO!!”
When we were visiting rural Appalachia, one of the boys said the most common Last Words there are “Here, hold my beer and watch this!”