Accredited official statistics

Changes to drink-drive statistics: user feedback request

Published 23 February 2022

The road safety statistics team regularly reviews the contents on its publications to ensure they remain relevant and meet user needs. We have recently reviewed the drink-drive statistics and would welcome feedback from users which can be provided by completing our feedback survey or be emailing the road safety statistics team using the contact details below.

Proposed changes to tables issued with final drink-drive estimates

In accordance with the departments policy on spreadsheet accessibility, during 2022 we will make the drink-drive data tables accessible, resulting in some changes to the format and structure of the tables. At the same time, we are proposing to make some further changes to the tables to streamline them and make it easier for users to find the statistics of most interest to them.

We propose to group tables that we continue to publish as follows:

Category	Table	Title
Overall drink-drive trends	RAS51001	Reported drink drive accidents and casualties in Great Britain
Characteristics of drink-drive accidents	RAS51011	By month
Characteristics of drink-drive accidents	RAS51012	By time of day
Characteristics of drink-drive accidents	RAS51019	By country and English region
Characteristics of drivers/riders involved	RAS51022	By sex of driver and rider
Characteristics of drivers/riders involved	RAS51010	By age of driver (cars only)
Casualties in drink-drive accidents	RAS51005	All casualties, by casualty type, sex and age
Casualties in drink-drive accidents	RAS51006	Driver and rider fatalities over the legal blood alcohol limit
Casualties in drink-drive accidents	RAS51009	Fatalities aged 16 and over, by blood alcohol level
Breath tests	RAS51002	Breath test and failures of drivers or riders involved in reported road accidents in Great Britain
Breath tests	RAS51016	Roadside screening breath tests and failures in England and Wales
Breath tests	RAS51017	Screening test results in England and Wales, by reason for test

We plan to drop 6 current tables, which website analytics suggest have had few downloads in the past year, as listed below.

Table	Title
RAS51003	Reported breath tests and breath test failures, all drivers and riders involved by day of week and time of day, Great Britain
RAS51004	Reported breath tests and breath test failures by road user type and age, Great Britain
RAS51008	Killed or Seriously Injured casualties in reported accidents involving young drivers and riders (17 to 24 years old) over the legal alcohol limit
RAS51013	Reported drink drive accidents by pedestrian, vehicle involvement, and severity, Great Britain
RAS51018	Results of screening breath tests following a road traffic collision: England and Wales
RAS51020	Car drivers in reported injury road accidents, breath tests and failures by English regions and country, Great Britain

Rationale for dropping these tables

RAS51003: Overall numbers of breath tests will be retained. Table RAS51012 covers drink-drive accidents by day and time.

RAS51004: Overall numbers of breath tests will be retained. Drivers involved in drink drive accidents by age are given in table RAS51010.

RAS51008: Drivers involved in drink drive accidents by age are given in table RAS51010.

RAS51013: We have not identified any clear use for the data provided in this table.

RAS51018: This table provides a breakdown by age and gender. The overall results and trends are retained in table RAS51017.

RAS51020: Overall breath test figures will be retained. Car drivers in drink-drive accidents by region and country are given in table RAS51019.

Questions for feedback

Question 1. Do any of the proposed changes cause with problems with your work?

Question 2. If yes, please specify details of how you have used the information we are proposing to no longer publish

Reviewing the frequency of drink-drive estimates

The road safety statistics team are keen to improve the quality and timeliness of road safety data. Currently, provisional drink-drive estimates are released 14 months after the end of the year reported on (with a return rate around 30% from coroners), and final estimates are released 20 months after the end of the year (with a return rate around 60% from coroners).

Limitations of provisional figures

The range of uncertainty associated with the lower return rate at the provisional stage means that it is very unlikely the provisional publication can detect significant changes in the underlying trends.

In particular, recent analysis has shown that the provisional estimates of drink-drive deaths have a tendency to be revised downwards in the final figures. In each of the last 3 years, the percentage with BAC over the legal limit has fallen as more data has been received during the year, causing the provisional estimates to over-state the number of drink drive deaths.

Timeliness of final estimates

The road safety statistics team aims to reduce the delay from the end of the year to the date of publication by working to allow the data collection from coroners to start earlier and more regularly based on STATS19 data. Good progress was made prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic which has resulted in increased workload for coroners in the last 2 years, understandably impacting on the timeliness of data supply.

Possible future approach

We are considering replacing the current provisional and final annual statistics with one publication, which would be issued around 17 to 18 months after the end of the year and be based on a return rate around from coroners of at least 55% (which is 90 to 95% of the current final data).

Analysis suggests that at this point, estimates would change little as more data is received so that the figures would be more robust than the current provisional, but more timely than the current annual release. Any further data received from coroners following publication would be incorporated in the following year’s publication so that all data collected would be used.

Questions for feedback

We are considering two possible options:

Option 1 - continue with the provisional and final releases as at present

Option 2 - discontinue the provisional release given the issue raised above and bring the final publication forward (revising the estimate as part of the following year’s publication)

Question Could you please indicate which option would be your preferred choice, and explain why?

Drug-driving statistics

The road safety team is currently exploring the feasibility of producing initial statistics on drug-driving from the same coroners’ data which forms part of these drink-drive statistics. We have published further analysis of deceased drivers who had more than the legal amount of drugs (illegal or medicinal).

We aim to further develop these statistics, with an update as part of the final drink-drive statistics publication scheduled for July 2022.

Questions for feedback

Question 1. Are you aware of the department’s development of drug-driving statistics?

Question 2. Have you suggestions for how these could be developed to add value to the current evidence base?

Any other feedback and mailing list

Question. Have you got any other feedback on the drink-drive or drug-drive statistics?

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Road safety statistics

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