United Kingdom: Breath tests for alcohol fall by a quarter as campaigners warn drink-drivers are getting away

 

Source: The Telgraph

Olivia Rudgard

8 DECEMBER 2017

 

Breath tests for alcohol have fallen by a quarter over five years, figures show, as campaigners warn that drunk drivers are getting away with it.

 

Campaigners said that falling numbers of drink-drivers are being stopped by police while the overall number of deaths as a result of drunk driving has remained static for half a decade.

 

Experts said a hard core of drink drivers had not responded to efforts to make it socially unacceptable leading to a stalling in the number of people killed on the roads.

 

John Scruby, former police traffic officer and campaigner against drinking and driving, said that a certain type of offender would continue to drink and drive unless the law was better enforced.

 

“With the education that we do, they’re aware that drink driving is something they shouldn’t be doing,” he said.

 

“It’s the same with mobile phones or anything – certain people think they’ve become immune to it, but they haven’t.”

 

After years of falling deaths as a result of drink driving, the figure stalled at around 240 between 2010 and 2014, leading to fears that educating motorists was no longer enough to stop them from driving while drunk.

 

In 2015, the most recent figures available, there was a drop to 200, but a spokesman for charity the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety said the overall numbers were too low for this to be seen as a definitive reduction.

 

Official figures from the Department for Transport also show that the total number of casualties increased between 2014 and 2015, from 8,210 to 8,470.

 

He added that it was also concerned people were starting to take drink-driving less seriously.

 

“We are worried people are becoming more relaxed and blase about it because they think there are fewer police out there,” he said.

 

Mr Scruby added that there was also little understanding of the drink-drive limits which was leading people to overestimate how much they could drink before they were over the limit.

 

“A lot of that is also due to mis-education and non education – or the education still hasn’t got through,” he said.

 

Christmas is a peak time for drink-drive offences. Last week police revealed that during last year’s crackdown they stopped more than 100,000 vehicles, with 5,698 breath tests that were positive, failed or refused.

 

The report, by the Institute of Alcohol Studies, argues that the alcohol limit should be lowered to prevent more people being killed on the roads.

 

In the UK the limit is currently 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, which should be lowered to 50 milligrams, the authors say.

 

Introducing the report, Labour peer Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe said: “Support has been demonstrated from charities, road safety organisations, publicans, and the public alike. It would seem we are primed for a change.”

 

The data, obtained from an FOI request sent to police forces in England, shows that the number of breath tests made by police has fallen from 606,411 in 2011 to 456,736 in 2015.

 

The report added that traffic police had been particularly badly affected by police cuts, with 82.4 per cent of forces reporting that the proportion of total frontline officers who were working on policing the roads had fallen.

 

“While evidence suggests a successful drink drive strategy comprises enforcement, a lower limit, and public awareness, the Government’s current support of the 80mg/100ml drink drive limit rests substantially on a level of enforcement which this report has demonstrated as lacking.

 

“This position appears increasingly untenable, and the need to reduce the drink drive limit all the more pressing,” it said.

 

Earlier this year the AA warned that older people were increasingly likely to be caught drink-driving because they think they have the skill to drive safely.

 

Data released by the Ministry of Justice following a Freedom of Information request showed that the number of over-65s convicted of the offence had risen from 1,295 in 2005 to 1,435 in 2015.

 

A spokesman for the AA said: “Hard core older drink drivers will have developed bad habits over years, probably got away with it in the past and believe they can still drive safely when half-cut.”

 

A Government spokesman said: “Police have the powers they need to keep our roads safe and latest figures show that deaths as a result of drink driving on British roads are at a record low.

 

“It is for Chief Constables and locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners to decide how to deploy their resources in response to local priorities.

 

“This Government has protected overall police spending in real terms since the 2015 Spending Review. In 2017/18, the taxpayer is investing £11.9billion in our police system, an increase of more than £475million from 2015.”