The UK Government is coming under increasing pressure to improve road safety by reducing the drink driving limit in England and Wales.
A coalition of road safety charities, emergency services and health groups has made fresh calls to have the limit reduced after recent statistics show no progress has been made on drink driving since 2010, with 240 deaths and more than 8,000 casualties reported each year.
England and Wales have one of the highest drink-drive limits in the world. Set at 80mg alcohol per 100ml blood, it is greater than the rest of Europe (with the exception only of Malta), as well as Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Scotland lowered its limit to 50mg in December 2014, and police figures showed a 12.5% decrease in drink-drive offences in the first nine months. Northern Ireland is set to lower its drink driving limit before the end of 2016.
The majority (60%) of those killed or injured are people other than the driver, such as passengers, pedestrians and cyclists, says the RAC. Research shows that lowering the drink-drive limit to 50mg alcohol/100ml blood would reduce drink driving deaths by at least 10%.
“Recent decades have seen great improvements in road safety, but progress on drink driving has ground to a halt,” commented Katherine Brown, Director at the Institute of Alcohol Studies. “With hundreds of lives lost each year, we can’t afford to let England and Wales fall behind our neighbours in road safety standards.”
“It’s time the Government looked at the evidence and what other countries are doing to save lives and make roads safer,” she added. “We need to make drink driving a thing of the past, and to do this we need a lower drink-drive limit.”
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