Drinking.. Driving.. Surviving

Controlled driver experiments where subjects with a blood alcohol reading of 0.08 drive cars and they measure their reaction times, feature in this educational film. This film shows attitudes to drinking and driving in the late 1970s, when the blood alcohol legal limit in most Australian states was higher than today. Young people discuss social pressures and what they regard as their ‘safe’ level of alcohol intake. One man says candidly 'Whenever I'm drunk I don't give any thought to the people I might kill. I don't even give any thought to my own life, until I come so close that I almost have an accident and then I think what could have happened'.

In an instructive and non-sensational way, the film also presents information about alcohol and the body, road deaths using animation. It shows statistics that alcohol plays a part in approximately half of the deaths on Australia's roads.

Film Australia Collection © National Film and Sound Archive.