Health First: An evidence-based alcohol strategy for the UK

Health First: an evidence-based alcohol strategy for the UK
Drink driving: the legal blood
alcohol limit
Drink driving remains a major cause of injury and
death in the UK. In 2011, drink driving resulted
in 9,990 casualties including 280 deaths on British
roads 1 . Analysis of road traffic deaths reveals the
extent to which alcohol is implicated: over half (54%)
of the cases examined by coroners involve drugs and/
or alcohol with 42% involving alcohol only 2 . In England,
the cost of drink driving is estimated to be £500million
per year 3 .
These harms are best tackled through population
to between 20 and 50mg/100ml reduces this risk to
around three times that of the completely sober driver.
Crucially, there is convincing evidence that lowering
the legal blood alcohol limit would affect the behaviour
of drivers at all blood alcohol levels, including those
drivers who drink heavily and in excess of the current
80mg/100 ml limit 8 .
The impact of any change in the limit will be constrained
by the effort put into its enforcement. In fact, improving
enforcement would itself have a dramatic impact
on drink driving harms. In Australia, for example,
the introduction of random breath-testing reduced
alcohol-related fatalities by 33% and injuries by 17% 9 .
The NICE guidelines recommend the introduction
Lowering the legal blood alcohol limit would affect
the behaviour of drivers at all blood alcohol levels,
including those drivers who drink heavily
measures to reduce alcohol consumption, i.e. the
measures described in chapters 3 to 6 to make
alcohol less affordable, less attractive, less visible
and less available. However, targeted driver-specific
interventions are also needed to reduce the incidence
of alcohol-related road accidents.
The legal blood alcohol concentration limit for drink
driving is currently set at 80mg/100ml in the UK, the
highest – and thus least stringent – limit in Europe with
the exception of Malta. Although the introduction
of this limit in 1967 reduced the number of alcoholrelated
deaths on the roads 4 , there is clearly scope to
go further. A review for NICE indicated that lowering
the limit to 50mg/100ml would reduce fatalities by
6.4% and injuries by 1.4% in the first year after its
implementation 5 . The Scottish government has recently
indicated that it intends to lower the blood alcohol
concentration limit for drink driving to 50g/100ml and
the Northern Ireland government is consulting on a
similar reduction.
NICE’s recommendation 6 to reduce the blood alcohol
concentration limit to 50mg/100ml is supported by the
North Review of the Drink and Drug Driving Law 7 which
noted that, although any alcohol consumption impairs
driving, a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of
between 50 and 80mg/100ml has at least six times the
risk of dying in a crash than a driver who has drunk
no alcohol. Reducing the blood alcohol concentration
of both random breath-testing and selective testing
at ‘sobriety checkpoints’. Such measures have a
potentially powerful deterrent effect.
Such changes in policy must be communicated to the
public through mass media campaigns which both
reiterate the dangers of drink driving and make drivers
aware of the changes to the legal blood alcohol limit.
Recommendations
The legal limit for blood alcohol
concentration for drivers should be
reduced to 50mg/100ml.
Random breath-testing of drivers should
be introduced.
Drink driving: graduated driver
licensing
Younger drivers are particularly at risk of crashing
when they have been drinking because they are less
experienced drivers, less mature and have a lower
tolerance of the effects of alcohol than older people.
Younger drivers may also be predisposed to risk-taking.
Drivers between the ages of 17 and 24 are far more
37