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Driving under Influence

Answer

The Department is strongly committed to reducing drink and drug driving on roads, and uses the THINK! Campaign in England and Wales as a key pillar in the Department’s commitment to improving road safety. The Department assesses the effectiveness of these campaigns through evaluation of awareness, recognition, reported behaviour change and attitudes towards risky driving behaviours.

THINK! is the Government’s flagship road safety campaign. Drink driving and drug driving are priority issues the campaign addresses, particularly among young men aged 17 to 24 who are four times more likely to be killed or seriously injured on the road than any other age group.

Against a backdrop of consistent long-term funding for THINK! campaigns, the number of killed or seriously injured casualties involving a young car driver has fallen 61% in the last 20 years, from 12,190 in 2004 to 4,740 in 2024. Whilst it is not possible to directly attribute changes in road deaths to any single factor, research shows that there have been high levels of self-reported action amongst young people as a result of seeing a THINK! campaign, with 9 in 10 taking action, including changing their own driving behaviour.

In the summer of 2025, as a direct result of seeing THINK!’s recent campaigns on drink driving and the promotion of THINK! 0%:

• 59% of young men said they chose not to drink any alcohol before driving or not to drive if they had been drinking.
• There was an 8 percentage point increase in the number of young men saying they would abstain completely from alcohol if they were driving.
• There was a significant increase in the proportion of young male drivers who said they are very likely to have a 0% alcohol alternative when driving, up from 31% to 42% post-campaign.

In November 2025, THINK! launched a new marketing campaign to raise awareness of drug driving, in response to the increasing trend of collisions involving a driver impaired by drugs. The campaign delivered positive results from its first run and was the most noticed THINK! campaign in recent years:

• 72% of young men recognised the campaign.
• 40% of those who did said they changed their own driving behaviour as a result, including not driving if they had taken drugs or finding an alternative form of transport if they had.
• There was also a 7 percentage point increase in young men’s awareness that driving on drugs can lead to a criminal record.

Enforcement of drink and drug driving legislation, and how available resources are deployed, is an operational matter for individual Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners to determine in conjunction with local crime and policing plans, taking into account the specific local problems and demands with which they are faced.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

13808

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Drugs Driving under influence Publicity

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk