Deaths due to drinking and driving on UK roads have increased to 300 annually, a 13-year high, according to newly published government data.
There were an estimated 300 deaths where at least one driver was over the legal blood-alcohol limit in 2022, the latest year for which official figures are available, the Department for Transport said. This is the highest annual figure since 2009, a toll motoring organisations described as “abhorrent” and concerning.
The number is 16% higher than in 2021 and means drink-drive fatalities accounted for about 18% of all road deaths, bucking the general long-term trend for safer roads and more responsible driving.
Men are most likely to be responsible for drink-driving crashes, with a male driver in 79% of such collisions, compared with 70% of all reported incidents of this kind.
The road safety charity IAM RoadSmart called for more random breath-testing and additional police help. William Porter, the charity’s policy manager, said: “It is deeply concerning that drink-drive related fatalities are at their highest level since 2009 and worryingly shows a dangerous upward trend for the second year running. The UK government should give serious consideration to reviewing and reducing the drink-drive limit.”
The legal alcohol limit for driving in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 80mg in 100ml of blood, compared with 50mg in Scotland since the devolved government tightened laws in 2014.
Rod Dennis, the RAC’s 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 are back to a 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.”
The AA’s president, Edmund King, said it was “a tragedy that drink-drive fatalities are still so high”, calling for “more cops in cars to act as a visual deterrent and more campaigns to show the utter carnage caused by drivers’ actions”.
Another 1,610 people were seriously injured in drink-drive crashes, with 4,890 suffering slight injuries in 2022, a 1% rise on 2021.
The figures only include crashes where a driver is found to be over the legal limit, rather than all such incidents where someone involved has alcohol in their blood.
