By contrast, teenagers who begin drinking before they are allowed to and young adults who just started drinking at the age of 21 frequently drink so much they become extremely intoxicated even when they do not mean to. They overestimate their ability to function; they underestimate their relative degree of impairment from alcohol; and they are the most prone to becoming more bold and more careless (or fearless) when they are intoxicated.

Whenever I have the opportunity to talk to my peers, I try to promote the idea that there is simply no such thing as any "safe" amount of alcohol that can be consumed before driving any kind of motor vehicle. Even is the statutory limit "allows" a certain cutoff point before a person is considered "intoxicated" by legal standards, the relative risk of being involved in an accident skyrocket after even a single drink as compared with the...
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