The drink-drive limit in England and Wales should be lowered by more than a third to reduce alcohol-related accidents, councils and fire authorities have said.
The Local Government Association (LGA) and all fire and rescue authorities in England and Wales are calling for the limit to be dropped from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.
However, the Department for Transport declined to support a reduction in the limit, saying the emphasis should be on catching drunk-drivers.
England and Wales have the second highest legal limit in Europe after Malta, which has announced it will cut its limit this year. Simon Blackburn, chair of the LGA’s safer and stronger communities board, said the law was not sending the right message to motorists.
The Scottish government reduced its drink-drive limit to 50mg in December 2014 and Northern Ireland will soon do the same, with even lower limits for professional and learner drivers.
Between 220 and 240 people a year died in drink-drive accidents between 2010 and 2015. Provisional figures show the number of serious drink-drive accidents – in which at least one person was seriously injured – rose 11% between 2014 and 2015, from 880 to 980, although the total number of accidents rose only slightly. A total of 8,480 people were injured in drink-drive incidents in 2015. A transport department spokesman said the rise in serious accidents reflected a change in how serious injuries were recorded.
In 2010 a review by the legal academic Sir Peter North recommended that the limit should be cut to 50mg. Research by the Centre for Public Health Excellence estimated this reduction could save up to 170 lives in the first year, rising to more than 300 by the sixth year.
But the coalition government decided in 2011 not to lower the limit, arguing that it would not be cost-effective and that better enforcement was more important.
Last year research by the Alcohol Health Alliance, the RAC and the road safety charity Brake found that a lower limit would save £300m annually by reducing the number of 999 responses and hospital admissions.
A department spokeswoman said: “Making our roads safer and saving lives is a priority for this government and the success we have had in tackling drink-driving has been down to the severe penalties, rigorous enforcement and hard-hitting campaigns making this behaviour socially unacceptable.
“Those over the current drink-driving limit cause a disproportionate amount of harm. These are the people we need to focus our efforts and resources upon. Our roads continue to be amongst the safest in the world because we crack down on those who break the law.”
Blackburn said: “A lower alcohol limit would help to deter motorists from drinking at all before getting behind the wheel and encourage them to have ‘none for the road’.
“With Northern Ireland set to follow Scotland’s example, and numerous organisations supporting a lower alcohol limit, the government should examine the evidence from other countries and lower the drink-drive limit in order to improve public safety.”
The RAC called on the government to review all the available evidence. Its road safety spokesman Pete Williams said: “There is a growing body of evidence to support a reduction in the drink-drive limit both in terms of lives saved and financial savings from reduced hospital costs. This is backed up by our own research that shows that the majority of motorists [57%] support a lower drink-drive limit.”
