subject: Alcohol and Road Accident Stats In The UK [print this page] Alcohol and Road Accident Stats In The UK
If we look back to the early 1980's there were clear indications that drink driving was a problem that needed to be dealt with. By 1986 the number of serious injuries sustained by people in road accidents where the driver was over the limit and remember that these also include pedestrians was in excess of 6,000, with fatalities making up 1000 of those. Total injuries stood at 27,000 for the year.
A concerted effort to crack down on drink driving was put into place, and by 1996 ten years later both figures were approximately half of the 1986 equivalents. In recent years there has been a levelling out of the numbers, with some years seeing a slight increase and others a fall, but what is clear is that fewer people are taking the choice to drive while under the influence these days, and with dramatic effects on the injuries sustained.
To provide some simple statistics, there is a general belief that five percent of all road accidents that result in whiplash claims involve alcohol, as do some 13% of all fatalities on the road. But what receives lesser publicity is the way in which drug use has increased in direct contrast to alcohol.
Recent statistics proved that there has been a six fold rise in the number of road accidents involving illegal drug use since 1986; now it is a fact that six percent of all road accident fatalities have been using an illegal substance. This alarming statistic flies in the face of the dramatic reduction in drink driving cases, and may point to a deeper social concern for all.
Overall, we have seen that alcohol's influence in road accidents has fallen considerably in the last two decades, thanks in large to campaigns that alert the public to the dangers and to better policing of the issue.
