Drink driving fatalities are at the highest level since 2009

It has been revealed that road deaths involving drink driving are at their highest level in over a decade, according to the latest figures from the Department for Transport

The report shows that between 290 and 320 people were killed in collisions in Great Britain where at least one driver was over the drink-drive limit, with a central estimate of 300 deaths.

Although the Department for Transport believes a change in driver behaviour during the global pandemic could be a contributing factor, it also states that the central estimate of fatalities for 2022 is the highest level since 2009, and an increase compared to the previous year.

Rod Dennis, RAC Road Safety Spokesperson said: “While the number of people killed by drink-drivers is still thankfully far lower now compared to the final decades of the 20th century, the fact we’re back to similar rate of fatalities caused by people drinking and driving as we were in the late 1980s is abhorrent.

“It’s abundantly clear that a hard core of people, especially men, continue to put the lives of all road users at risk by choosing to get behind the wheel after consuming too much alcohol.

“This is the case across the UK, including in Scotland, which has had a lower blood alcohol limit than in England and Wales since 2014.”

Despite the rise in numbers of fatalities over the last decade, compared to the previous year in 2021, collisions went down by one per cent. Furthermore, the crashes involving at least one drink-drive limit has dropped by eight per cent since 1979.

In 1979, 26 per cent of road deaths occurred in collisions where at least one driver or rider was over the drink-drive limit.

This had fallen to 15 per cent by 1989. Since then the percentage of road deaths that are drink-drive related has varied between 12 per cent and 18 per cent. In 2022, the rate was 18 per cent.