You go out after work for a few drinks with your coworkers, or you go to a friend’s house to watch the big game, and everyone is drinking. Perhaps you just go to a local brewery for dinner, or you visit a new wine bar with your spouse.
In all of these situations, you may want to drive home, even though you know you have been drinking. For many people, the solution is simply to wait. They do not want to find themselves facing drunk driving allegations, so they wait for their blood alcohol concentration to go down after they stop drinking.
But is this actually a viable and safe tactic? How fast is your BAC going to decline?
A slow decline of 0.015% per hour
You certainly could still face drunk driving allegations, even if you wait for what feels like a substantial amount of time. This is because the BAC decline rate is very slow, at just 0.015% per hour.
People will sometimes wait for half an hour or 45 minutes, and then they assume they are sober enough to drive. But in that amount of time, if their BAC was already over the legal limit, it may not have had a chance to drop far enough for them to avoid legal charges.
It is also important to note that your BAC does not start dropping immediately, as soon as you have your final drink. It takes time for your body to absorb the alcohol, so your BAC is actually going up. You have to wait for that alcohol to enter your system, your BAC to peak, and then for it to decline on the other side of that peak.
This can all be very hard to judge when trying to decide if you are sober enough to drive, and it leads to many mistakes. Those who find themselves facing drunk driving charges must know about all the defense options at their disposal.
