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Driving under Influence

Answer

The Department for Transport only holds information on reported personal-injury accidents on public roads (including footways) in Great Britain, which became known to the police.

The table below gives the number of deaths in Great Britain in accidents involving at least one driver with illegal blood alcohol content in each year since 2010.

Year	95% Cl lower2	Number of deaths1	95% Cl upper2
2010	220	240	260
2011	220	240	250
2012	210	230	250
20133	230	260	290
1. Estimates are rounded to the nearest ten.
2. Upper and lower range for fatalities based on the 95% confidence interval
3. Figures for 2013 are provisional

These figures are produced from breath tests carried out by the police following accidents and information from coroners in England and Wales and procurators fiscal in Scotland about drivers who died in accidents. Due to complexity of the information from post-mortems and accidents where at least one driver did not stop, there is a considerable uncertainty about precisely which accidents involved drivers who were over the drink drive limit. As a result, the number of deaths is an estimate and the exact figure is unknown.

The figures in the table provide the best estimate of deaths and the upper and lower confidence interval represent the range in which we are 95% confident the exact figure falls.

Years with overlapping confidence intervals do not have statistically significant differences in the number of deaths. Therefore the number of deaths has been broadly the same each year from 2010 onwards.

The figures for 2013 are provisional estimates. Final figures for 2013 will be released in August 2015 alongside a first estimate for 2014.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

HL5787

Session

2014-15

Subjects

Death Driving under influence

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk