Let’s imagine two people sitting at a bar. They both are similar sizes and both order the same drink. Over the course of the evening, they both drink the same number of drinks. At the end of the night, they both drive home. However, one is legally sober and the other is legally intoxicated. How can this be the case?
This can happen if one of the people is a woman and the other is a man. For three reasons we examine below, women respond differently to alcohol, which could make them more likely to be arrested for DUI.
According to a brief produced by the Traffic Resource Center for Judges:
- Women feel the effects of alcohol more than men because they have fewer enzymes breaking down alcohol.
- Blood alcohol levels increase faster in women, as there is less water in their bodies to dilute the alcohol before it reaches the blood stream.
- Blood alcohol levels stay elevated longer in women.
The fact that a woman can get more intoxicated faster than a man, and then stay impaired for longer could certainly be a contributing factor in the whopping 28.8 percent increase in DUI arrests for women during the course of the study examined in the brief. The report also notes that more women are drinking than in previous years, which is a contributing factor as well.
Regardless of your gender, it can be all but impossible to exactly measure BAC without chemical testing, which makes it easy to misjudge whether you should drive or not. If you do wind up arrested and facing DUI charges in Florida, understand that you have the right to defend yourself with the help of an attorney.
