Road Casualties: Drinking and Driving, 2010

Statistics on 2010 Road Casualties Wales: Drinking and Driving include data for the period up to the end of December 2010. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 29 November 2010.

The available sources of information about drink driving and accidents suggest that drivers with blood alcohol levels above the legal limit for driving (currently 80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood) were involved in a significant minority of accidents in Wales.  The uncertainty of the data makes it impossible to get an exact estimate, but the highest estimates (made for the Department of Transport, DfT) suggest that one or more drivers over the drink-drive limit were involved in as many as:

• Around 1 in 4 fatal accidents in Wales;
• Around 1 in 13 serious accidents in Wales; and
• Around 1 in 17 slight accidents.

Other information about drink driving suggests that:

• Around 18 per cent of car drivers killed in traffic collisions were over the drink-drive limit;
• Around 11 per cent of motorcycle riders killed were over the drink drive limit; and
• In 2010, there were 127 accidents where the reporting police officer considered that a pedestrian(s) being ‘impaired by alcohol’ was a contributory factor to that accident.

Drug driving

• For every nine accidents where the driver was impaired by alcohol, there was around 1 accident where he/she was ‘impaired by drugs’, both illegal and medicinal.

Breath tests of drivers taken after accidents show:

• No marked seasonal pattern in casualties over a year arising from accidents where one or more of the drivers involved tested positive;
• More drivers in accidents test positive on the weekend rather than a weekday, and that they are more likely to test positive after traditional working hours, between 18:00 to 04:00.

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5062
E-mail: stats.transport@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

December 2012 (provisional - to be confirmed on 'Due out Soon' page)