While drinking and driving has long been known to be a dangerous behavior that should always be avoided, it unfortunately claims the lives of far too many people every single day. Energy drinks and alcohol may increase your chances of causing a car accident and injuring or killing others.

Energy drinks mixed with alcohol can amplify the implications of an accident. Mixing alcohol with any highly caffeinated energy drink can put people at higher risk for an injury, according to new research out of Canada’s University of Victoria. The risk of an injury can be up to 20 times higher when an individual is mixing alcohol with energy drinks. Alcohol alone has been tied to a higher crash risk for every drink that a person has, their risk goes up. When a person has energy drinks and alcohol mixed, however, the risk of injury can be 20 times higher.

Given that the heaviest consumers of energy drinks and alcohol are between the ages of 18 and 25, this also has important implications because this is an age group that is often frequently involved in distracted driving behavior and deadly accidents. Make sure to identify other ways to get home if you have been drinking and especially if you have energy drinks and alcohol together.

Across the United States, research studies and legislators have attempted to understand in a deeper way how individuals make decisions about what they do before and while they are operating a car and how this translates to real accidents on the road. If you or someone you know has already been injured in an accident caused by someone’s reckless or even criminal behavior if they were drinking and driving, this could form the basis of a personal injury claim that could allow you to recover compensation.