Introduction

Since the early 1980’s, there has been a substantial decline in drinking and driving and in the number of alcohol related deaths and injuries on the roads, which reached their lowest levels in 1998 and 1999. However, since 2000 the number of casualties has been rising again. The fatality figures for 2004 are the highest since 1992, with a total of 590 deaths. Around half of the casualties were people other than the drinking drivers themselves.

There were probably an additional 250 people killed in accidents involving drivers and riders with raised blood alcohol levels but still below the current legal limit.

Altogether, therefore, around one in five road deaths are alcohol related.

In What Ways Does Alcohol Affect Driving Skills

After drinking, the brain works inefficiently, taking longer to receive messages from the eye; processing information becomes more difficult and instructions to the muscles are delayed. Alcohol can slow down the reaction time by 10 to 30 percent. It also reduces ability to perform two or more tasks at the same time.

Alcohol reduces the ability to see distant objects and night vision can be reduced by 25 percent. Blurred and double vision can also occur. Ability to perceive what is happening at the roadside is weakened. Loss of peripheral vision could be crucial. Alcohol may also create a sense of overconfidence, with the result that people are prepared to take greater risks.

Even when sober, young drivers and riders are more accident prone than older, more experienced drivers. Their lower tolerance to alcohol further increase their accident risk. The vulnerability levels of young drink driving offenders compared with older offenders. The same pattern is found in drivers who are killed. For young people accident risk increases after one drink; after two it doubles and after five it can have increased ten fold.

The Legal Limit For Driving

The legal blood alcohol limit for driving is 80 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 milliletres of blood (80mg%) equivalent to 35 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 milliletres of breath, or 107 milligrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of urine. However, prosecution guidelines followed by police services mean that in practice drivers are not normally prosecuted until they reach 40 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 milliletres of breath, equivalent to over 90mg%. Before its election and again in 1998, the UK government announced that it intended to reduce the legal limit to 50mg% and this proposal was put out for consultation. The police, virtually the whole road safety community and public opinion all favoured lowering the limit. In March 2000, the government announced that it had decided not to lower the limit, giving as the reason awaiting possible moves to harmonise drink drive limits in the European Union. In reality, the Government simply bowed to pressure from the alcohol industry.

Deaths below the current (80mg%)

The Department of Transport states that drinking by drivers with blood alcohol levels of between 50mg% and 80mg% is a significant but largely hidden cause of accidents. The Department estimates that around 80 road deaths a year are attributable to blood alcohol levels between 50mg% and 80mg%.

On average there are 200-300 road deaths each year associated with blood alcohol levels between 10-80mg%. An estimate does not appear to have been provided of the number of injuries associated with blood alcohol levels below the present limit.

Who Are The Drink Drivers?

More than 9 out of 10 of those people convicted are male. Under 21s account for around 10 percent of convictions. The peak age for becoming a ‘high risk offender’ is 27; relatively few people become high risk offenders after the age of 45. Young male manual workers (or unemployed) who drink beer in pubs have been identified as one high risk group, but so have older professional/managerial men.

Approximately half of convicted drink drivers have blood alcohol levels in excess of 150mg%. Around 12 percent of convicted drink drivers are convicted of a second offence within ten years.

Drink drive accidents can be caused by drivers of all ages, but the highest rates of drink drive accidents per 100,000 licence holders occur in young men aged up to 34, particularly the age group 20-24.