Boomers are more at risk of impaired driving than millennia

Baby boomers, all over the age of 50, have seen the fastest rise in the rate of alcohol and drug abuse over the last 15 years – and this is happening on British roads.

At first glance, the latest data on accidents and casualties reported on public roads in England and Wales are little more than a general update. There are standard statistics on impaired driving accidents and on victims using roadside respiratory tests. There is also data on blood alcohol levels in accidents involving death while driving. In 2017, just under 171,000 people were victims of reported traffic accidents. This figure was 6% lower than in 2016 – making it the lowest level ever.

But more revealing data comes from the British Crime Survey. The survey examined the self-badessment of driving by people who thought they had exceeded the legal limit of alcohol at least once in the last 12 months. Between 2010 and 2018, the proportion of people aged 16 to 19 who took this risk decreased by almost 50%. For 50-year-olds, it decreased by only 11%.

The same survey also provided data on the proportion of people who reported driving under the influence of drugs in the last 12 months – giving a very different picture. Although there has been a 61% reduction for 16 to 19 year olds over the last ten years, the reduction for baby boomers was staggering 98%.

A likely explanation for the comparatively larger reductions in the number of people willing to take the risk of impaired driving compared to drunk driving could be a change in the law over the past four years. Until 2015, there was no set limit for individual controlled drugs when indicting a person suspected of driving under the influence of the drug. This changed in 2015 with the introduction of Article 5A of the Road Traffic Act. This sets an upper limit for the level of specific controlled drugs in the driver's blood.

A report badessing the impact of this change in enforcement highlighted increased awareness of law enforcement change among road users of all age groups. This seems to have been an even greater deterrent against driving drugs among the elderly.

Cultural norms

Why are older drivers more likely to risk impaired driving than drugs? This can partly be influenced by cultural norms, such as exposure to high levels of advertising during their early years, but also to the increased affordability of alcohol.

An upper legal limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 ml of blood (0.08%) was adopted throughout Europe more than 50 years ago. Unlike the rest of Europe and Scotland, the rest of the UK has not changed this legal level. In Scotland, for example, it is now 0.05%

In 2013, the US National Transportation Safety Board lowered the legal limit for alcohol in the blood from 0.08% to 0.05%. This resulted in an 11% drop in the number of alcohol-related fatalities.

Slow reactions

Even without drinking alcohol, older people have slower reaction times and are less able to maintain a constant distance behind another car during driving simulation compared to younger people.

Seniors are also more likely to experience the harmful effects of alcohol after consuming the same amount of alcohol as young people. This is due to a reduced ability to remove alcohol from the bloodstream, as well as a higher likelihood of taking prescribed medications and having long-term health problems that accompany them. .

Should there be a lower legal alcohol level? Given that baby boomers are at increasing risk of alcohol abuse and are more likely to be driving impaired than driving with drugs, this may be the only direction to take. After all, alcohol is a drug. And the sooner it will be treated as such, the better.