Invisible killers behind the wheel. Czechs drive under the influence of alcohol, cannabis and meth

“Many people cannot imagine the consequences of intoxication with addictive substances in subsequent actions. That’s why we have simulation glasses that simulate different situations,” police prevention officer Ondřej Penc shows Novinka glasses with special lenses. They use them as part of preventive actions or teacher training.

Each of them is supposed to simulate distorted vision caused by a different substance. For example, alcohol, with which many people already have experience, but the strongest glasses imitate a very strong drunkenness with 3.5 per million, which can be a state on the verge of unconsciousness. Even with such a high level of alcohol in the blood, drivers get behind the wheel, as evidenced by the police footage from the event, for example.

The other two glasses simulate the phase of severe fatigue. Why does she belong here too? “Experts agree that such a state is very similar to a state affected by alcohol,” explains Penc.

The Shortcuts campaign is a preventive campaign in which the Czech Association of Insurance Companies participates together with the Police of the Czech Republic, and they are dedicated to prevention within the Shortcuts campaign, the main goal of which is to draw attention to the dangers of drugs and alcohol while behind the wheel. The drug topic was also dealt with by the public television series Adikts or the follow-up documentary series entitled Czech Republic on Drugs.

However, taking a higher amount of medication and various prescription medications, including some cough, allergy or relaxation medications, can also affect your ability to drive. A doctor, pharmacist or information on the box often warns against driving or operating machines while taking these medications.

Other glasses approximate the changes in visual perception when using marijuana or drugs such as ecstasy or LSD. “We see blurred edges of objects, we have more pronounced color vision according to individual dispositions, we perceive a floating, floating world, we are taken out of reality,” describes the visual sensations during hallucinogen intoxication, director of the National Anti-Drug Center Jakub Frydrych.

According to both experts, the danger of drugs lies in the fact that each drug affects the given individual differently. “You can be tired, you can be drunk, you can be a first-time user, you try something and you have no idea how the substance will react in you and how you will react to it. And in connection with driving a vehicle, it is extremely dangerous,” warns the prevention officer.

As a result of intoxication with narcotic substances, a person’s normal reflexes either slow down or speed up.

“As drivers, we also have a bad estimate of distance, a bad estimate of time, we misjudge the situation on the road in front of us, we can have tunnel vision, we can have blurred vision, we can see objects twice or three times,” Penc summarizes the symptoms.

“Stimulants typically cause hyperactivity, even expand peripheral vision, increase the self-confidence of those people, they feel that at that moment they can do anything and nothing is impossible, especially the mentioned estimate, which is also very important in road traffic, can be distorted,” adds Frydrych .

Chases with police cars on the roads are often the fault of users of stimulants (they include, for example, ecstasy, amphetamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, crack), with which the drug increases the pace of life, boosts self-confidence or possibly induces paranoid states.

“On the other hand, opioids, benzodiazepines or opioid analgesics will depress us, we will have slower reactions behind the wheel, precisely in situations in which we need to react quickly, and this can cause collisions. And I’m not talking about a collision with more vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians or cyclists,” adds the director of the anti-drug headquarters.

According to him, alcohol dominates the Czech environment, followed by cannabis and meth. “Probably the most significant change in recent times is the share of substances other than alcohol, according to the latest figures it has increased from 10% to 30%,” he points out the trend.

In the last five years, his organization has also registered more intensively appearing psychoactive substances that are not considered “conventional” and may be stronger. It often flows into distribution using the Internet or mail order services.

“Their effects have not yet been sufficiently explored, and for casual and experimental users who have no experience with them, the change in consciousness can be completely unpredictable,” mentions Frydrych.

According to police statistics, most traffic accidents happen on Friday night and Saturday morning, policemen sometimes refer to them as so-called disco crash, i.e. disco accidents, and mainly concern young people between 18 and 25 years old.

“Young drivers move from one restaurant to another or to a disco and often have fatal consequences, because the driver is often under the influence of alcohol or drugs, he does not estimate the distance, speed or passing through bends and trees,” explains Penc.

Last year, there were almost 95,000 traffic accidents in the Czech Republic, and 455 people died in them. There were more than 4,600 culprits under the influence, and over 3,500 of them had over one per thousand of alcohol in their blood. “The limit of one per thousand is quite fundamental for us, because it determines the border between a misdemeanor and a criminal act,” explains the prevention specialist.

And he adds other figures from 2023: “As far as drugs are concerned, we had 440 culprits in traffic accidents affected by some addictive substance, such as ecstasy, marijuana and others.” According to him, the most serious cases include those in which drivers combine alcohol with drugs. This was almost in 120 cases recorded by the defenders of the law last year.