Leasing Options has uncovered some interesting trends into drink driving and it’s decrease in prevalence over the past four decades.
Using a data set that goes back to 1979 they have uncovered a 70% decline in drink driving cases over the past 40 years. However the last 5 years has seen the total casualties from drink-driving related accidents increase by 5.7%
London comes out on top for the lowest number of accidents per population, possibly due to it’s excellent night time transport links.
However the East Midlands, which has only half the population of London, 4,811,100 compared to 8,982,300, accounted for 5,230 drink-driving related accidents since 2010, a whopping 24% more than in the capital.
Looking specifically at data from 2019, it’s not surprising to find Saturday the worst day of the week for failed breath tests, with 22:00 being the worst offending hour of the week. However outside of the weekend, the worst time for failed and/or unprovided breath tests is Wednesday night between 23:00 and 01:00.
Surprisingly, 1 in 10 of all failed tests occur between the hours of 05:00 and 09:00. Potentially after driving too early after a heavy night previously.
Their research also found that in 2019 men failed 77% of breath tests. However the number of these failed tests have decreased significantly over the past ten years from a staggering 10,556 cases in 2009 to 3,782 in 2019 (a 64% decrease).
Women however failed 1,144 tests in 2019 vs a 2,467 in 2009 (a 54% decrease).
Teenagers and 20 something’s were accountable for nearly 40% of all failed tests in 2019.