Drugs affect driving — Oklahoma Permit Test

Many prescription and even over-the-counter drugs, such as cold, hay fever, pain medications and diet pills, can slow your reaction time and impair your concentration and vision.

A medicine that is legal and common can still make you slow or drowsy at the wheel.

But not everyone realizes that many prescription drugs and even over-the-counter drugs (such as cold, hay fever, pain medications and diet pills) can slow your reaction time, make you dizzy or nervous and impair (damage, weaken or worsen) your concentration and vision.

The same drugs in the same amounts affect each person differently, and the same drug can affect you more at one time than another.

You cannot judge a drug’s effect on you from how it affected a friend or how you felt last time.

The same drugs and the same amounts of drugs, will affect each person differently.

Mixing drugs is especially dangerous, because they react with each other and multiply the harmful effects on your concentration and coordination, especially when one of them is alcohol.

Two drugs together can hit far harder than either alone, and a driver has no way to predict how much.

Mixing drugs can be especially dangerous, because they react with each other and multiply the harmful effects on your concentration and coordination.

Which of these can slow your reaction time and impair your driving?

Cold medicine. A medicine that is legal and common can still make you slow or drowsy at the wheel. Oklahoma Driver Manual, p.64: “But not everyone realizes that many prescription drugs and even over-the-counter drugs (such as cold, hay fever, pain medications and diet pills) can slow your reaction time, make you dizzy or nervous and impair (damage, weaken or worsen) your concentration and vision.”