Investigating the Effects of Alcohol Consumption on Manual and Automated Driving: A Systematic Review
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Summary
This systematic review investigates the impact of alcohol consumption on driving performance in both manual and automated vehicle contexts, motivated by the need to understand safety risks as autonomous vehicles (AVs) become prevalent. While AVs offer potential safety benefits, current technologies require human drivers to take over control during system limitations. The authors aim to synthesize existing literature to determine how alcohol impairs the human information processing stages—perception, cognition, and action—and how these impairments translate to AV takeover scenarios. The study followed PRISMA guidelines, searching eight databases for articles published between 1980 and 2022. After screening 24,776 identified records and removing duplicates and irrelevant studies, the authors analyzed 53 full-text articles. Most studies utilized driving simulators, with one conducted on a closed road. Findings were categorized using the human information processing model, extended to include predisposing factors (e.g., driving experience, drinking patterns) and post-action consequences. Results indicate that alcohol negatively affects driving performance across all processing stages. In the perception phase, alcohol delayed reaction times to hazards and altered visual scanning behaviors, such as increased blink rates and reduced fixation durations. Cognitive impairments included reduced divided attention capabilities and altered brain activity in regions managing decision-making and memory, evidenced by fMRI and EEG data. In the action phase, drivers exhibited delayed braking, increased speed variance, frequent speed limit violations, and significant lane deviation errors, even at low blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels. Predisposing factors moderated these effects; for instance, frequent drinkers showed faster reaction times than infrequent drinkers, likely due to desensitization, while novice drivers exhibited greater positional deviations than experienced ones. Regarding automated driving, only two studies addressed AV takeover performance, finding that higher BAC levels correlated with slower takeover response times and poorer lane and speed control. The review concludes that alcohol impairs driving through a chain reaction of deficits in perception, cognition, and motor control, which likely extends to AV takeover tasks. However, the authors identify a significant research gap, noting that existing studies tested limited BAC levels and few examined AV-specific takeover performance. The findings suggest that future research should prioritize understanding alcohol’s effects on AV takeover dynamics to inform vehicle design and safety regulations.
Key finding
Alcohol consumption impairs driving performance across all stages of the human information processing model, including perception, cognition, and action, with significant gaps remaining in research regarding automated vehicle takeover performance.
Methodology
review
Sample size: 53
Provenance
The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via bulk_ingest_rosap on 2026-05-23 (7 acquisition events logged).
| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | author_sweep | — | — | 3 | 2026-05-28 |
| archive | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
| clean | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| chunk | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-01 |
| embed | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-02 |
| enrich | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-05-23 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 3 | 2026-06-10 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 19 | 2026-06-11 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-10 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.
Topics
Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.
- alcohol
- polydrug
- alcohol detection systems
- drowsy as impairment
- situational awareness
- mci dementia driving
Information type
What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).
- Empirical Findings: behavioral performance data
- Theoretical Contribution: computational model, conceptual framework