This discussion is an attempt to outline the difficulties encountered in trying to predict drinks from BAC in a naturalistic setting. Some of the difficulties that result from a lack of complete information about the drinking event, present even in situations where very accurate and unbiased estimates of quantity consumed and BAC are available, are made worse by the restrictions placed on researchers by the use of standardized survey methods (e.g., measuring consumption over a 6 hour window). Therefore, it is not surprising that a rather weak relationship was found between BAC and self-reported number of drinks. Subsequent studies focusing not only on the overall drink count in a six hour period, but the total drinking that occurred in the entire drinking episode before the injury, as well as the pattern of drinking over this period, may be key in more accurately predicting consumption from BAC readings.
