The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) is backing the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents’ (RoSPA) call for the introduction of random breath testing but questions their analysis of the UK Christmas drink drive statistics.     

“This year’s figures clearly show fewer accidents, fewer injuries and fewer drink drive offenders,” said Mark Hastings, BBPA Director of Communications . “This is positive news but we need stronger enforcement by random testing to help the number of offenders keep falling.   We fully support RoSPA’s call for random testing but challenge their interpretation of the official accident statistics which actually show a 4% fall in drink drive offences. It’s an indisputable fact that the number of collisions reported to the police fell by 6% from 12,402 to 11,622. And, of those, 8.9% failed a breath test compared to 8.7 % in 2003, which means 1,035 drink drive offenders this year compared to 1,080 for Christmas 2002 – 45 fewer.”  

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) also shows that the number of collisions causing injury totalled 5002, a drop of 4.58% on 2002-3, while drink related collisions fell by a ‘significant’ 4.17 % on last year – 25% less than in 1997.

“Drink-related road accidents have declined steadily since the 1970s which shows that responsible drinking campaigns are working and random testing could add to their effectiveness,” Hastings added.