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Drink Driving as the Commonest Drug Driving-A Perspective from Europe

Allsop, R; (2020) Drink Driving as the Commonest Drug Driving-A Perspective from Europe. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , 17 (24) , Article 9521. 10.3390/ijerph17249521. Green open access

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Abstract

People mixing driving motor vehicles with consuming alcohol increases deaths and injuries on the roads, as was established irrefutably in the mid-1960s. This commentary discusses how society across Europe has responded since then to this burden by managing drink driving in the interests of road safety. The principal response has been to set, communicate and enforce limits on the level of alcohol in the blood above which it is illegal to drive and to deal in various ways with drivers found to be exceeding the limits. Achieving reduction in drink-related road deaths has benefitted public health, though the aim to change behaviour of drinking drivers has been a challenge to the profession. Other achievements have included changes in public attitude to drink driving, and reduction in reoffending by convicted offenders through rehabilitation courses and use of the alcohol interlock, which prevents starting of a vehicle by a driver who has drunk too much. There is scope for improved recording of road deaths identified as drink-related, greater understanding of effectiveness in enforcement of the legal limit and improved availability of the alcohol interlock. Relevance of experience with drink driving to management of other drug driving and prospects for building on the achievements so far are discussed.

Type: Article
Title: Drink Driving as the Commonest Drug Driving-A Perspective from Europe
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph17249521
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17249521
Language: English
Additional information: © 2020 by the Author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: drink-driving; social acceptability; blood alcohol concentration (BAC); risk of collision; legal BAC limit; enforcement; penalties; rehabilitation; alcohol interlock; drug driving
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Civil, Environ and Geomatic Eng
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10124042
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