Within our day-to-day lives, we are exposed to an ever-changing visual scene of objects and information, and from this scene, we try to construct an accurate representation of the world. However, particularly in complex scenes, the number of rapid changes can lead to missed information and errors. For instance, a driver may be looking right at a traffic light but miss it changing colour because of a brief distraction or glance towards a pedestrian. Such occasions of distraction can be amplified when alcohol has been consumed; with higher blood alcohol concentrations associated with more perceptual and cognitive failures. Theories indicate this is due to a narrowing of attention capture when alcohol concentration increases. This paper considers two studies exploring the impact of increasing blood alcohol concentration on performance in a flicker change detection task. Within Study 1, 52 participants identified central or peripheral changes in driving scenes with no significant difference in performance across change types. However, when a detection response task was incorporated into Study 2 (to more closely account for the cognitive demands of driving), increasing intoxication negatively impacted accuracy for peripheral changes. That is, participants performed worse at identifying changes when they occurred outside of the central attentional focal point. Participants appeared to 'trade off' performance on the peripheral change detections to maintain performance on the detection response task. With most participants falling within the legal limit of alcohol concentration for driving, this has implications for understanding how alcohol impacts our cognitive functions necessary for driving.