Two thirds of UK motorists who admit to drinking and driving say that if the legal limit was lowered any further they wouldn’t bother drinking, according to research carried out for the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH).
Aside from Malta the UK has the highest drink-drive limit in the EU with a legal blood alcohol limit of 80mg. RSPH is urging UK Governments to reduce the legal drink-drive limit from 80mg to 50mg.
In research carried out for RSPH two thirds of those who admit to drink-driving reveal they would not drink if the limit was lowered, as they would be unsure of the correct amount to drink, or the amount they could legally consume would become so low it wouldn’t be worth it.
While any amount of alcohol increases dangers, drivers just under the current limit are twice as likely to die in a crash compared to those just under the proposed limit of 50mg. In places where the legal limit has been reduced there have been significant drops in alcohol-related crashes.
Shirley Cramer CBE, Chief Executive of RSPH said: “Alcohol related road fatalities account for around 1 in 7 road traffic deaths and while good progress has been made in cutting the numbers killed or injured through alcohol-related driving incidents we believe that the UK should follow the lead of Scotland and the majority of EU countries and adopt a lower limit. The evidence is that this will lead to a drop in alcohol-related road traffic accidents and our research would suggest that a further reduction would encourage many motorists just not to take the risk of drink-driving.”
