Drink driving drop for France and UK

The latest data from France and the UK reveals a stunning long term drop in deaths from drink driving since the 1970s. This highlights the effectiveness of campaigns to tackle drink driving in both countries. In France some 18,000 people were killed on the roads in 1972, compared with 3,645 in 2012. The French Government intends to continue this road safety policy and intends to lower the annual fatality rate to 2,000 by 2020. There is a financial benefit to the economy from improving road safety. According
August 12, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
The latest data from France and the UK reveals a stunning long term drop in deaths from drink driving since the 1970s. This highlights the effectiveness of campaigns to tackle drink driving in both countries. In France some 18,000 people were killed on the roads in 1972, compared with 3,645 in 2012. The French Government intends to continue this road safety policy and intends to lower the annual fatality rate to 2,000 by 2020. There is a financial benefit to the economy from improving road safety. According to French figures, the average cost of a slightly wounded person is around €5,200. But this figure is some €132,300 when a person is hospitalised and as high as €1.2 million for a fatal crash. Companies also pay high prices. The average cost for an employee hurt in an accident is €25,000 for temporary injury, €86,000 for permanent injury and €400,000 for a fatality. Some cause for concern has been seen with the UK’s latest data on drink driving during 2012, although the overall trend is still encouraging. According to the UK’s 5432 Department for Transport (DfT), there was an increase in the number of casualties from drink-driving in 2012 compared with 2011. The provisional estimates for 2012 show that 290 people were killed in the UK in drink drive accidents, an increase of around 25% compared with 2011. There was a 5% decrease in seriously injured drink drive casualties in 2012 to around 1, 200 however. It is of note that there were 220 fatal drink drive accidents in 2011 resulting in 230 deaths, the lowest number of fatalities from drink driving since reporting began in 1979. Between 1979 and 2012 there has been an almost six-fold reduction in the number killed in drink drive accidents.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Safety improvements in developed nations
    August 20, 2013
    At a time when road safety is posing a significant threat to both human health and economic development around the world, it is worth noting that in many developed nations the situation is improving. The United Nations has identified road safety as a major problem and established its Decade of Action for Road Safety for the 2010-2020 period, in a bid to cut the growing death toll. But while developing nations are seeing a vast growth in vehicle numbers and road fatalities, the improving road safety situ
    Read More
  • Concerns for young drivers causing crashes
    May 24, 2016
    Concern is being expressed for the safety of young drivers. Statistics both from the US and the UK reveal the shockingly high risk of young drivers being involved in crashes. They also reveal that young drivers are a danger not only to themselves, but to other road users as well as the occupants of their own vehicles. The latest figures from the UK show that 2,088 young drivers and passengers aged from 17-24 were killed and seriously injured in just one year. Although the data shows that drivers aged fro
    Read More
  • Drink driving a concern for the UK
    August 28, 2019
    The rate of road crashes from drink driving remains a serious concern in the UK. In 2017, there were 220 road deaths in the UK attributable to drink driving, according to the latest figures from the Department for Transport (DfT), the same as for the previous year. However, there were 1,110 crashes caused by drink driving, an increase from the 1,010 from the previous year. In all, there were 8,600 deaths and serious injuries from road crashes in 2017, a drop from the 9,040 of the previous year but still hig
    Read More
  • Europe’s road safety targets at risk
    July 10, 2015
    This new analysis has been published by the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC). According to the ETSC data, 2014 showed the lowest annual reduction in EU road deaths since 2001. In all 25,845 people were killed in road crashes in the 28 nations of the EU during 2014. This represented a decrease of just 0.6% compared to 2013. EU member states now need to cut deaths by almost 8% each year until 2020 to meet the target set in 2010 to halve deaths within a decade.
    Read More

Highlighted Content