News
Young drivers willing to take drink-drive risk, Moto survey shows
13 December 2005
Moto quizzed 1,000 drivers under 25 and 1,000 over 45 about their attitudes to drink-driving and their knowledge of the law.
While just over 21 per cent of over 45s admitted driving when they were knowingly over the limit, almost half of the under 25s claimed they had. Broken down by gender, a frightening 58.9 per cent of young males said they had driven when they knew they shouldn’t because of drink, compared to 36.6 per cent of young women. In the older age group, the figures were 30.9 per cent for men and 11.3 per cent for women.
Of the young male drivers, 12.3 per cent said they regularly drove over the drink-drive limit with a further 28.7 per cent admitting they did so occasionally. Three per cent the young women drivers said they were regular offenders, while 21.6 per cent admitted to occasional breaches of the law.
By comparison, in the over 45s group, none of the women questioned admitted to regularly driving over the limit, with 3.7 per cent saying they occasionally did. Of the men, 1.8 per cent admitted to being regular over the limit behind the wheel with another 20 per cent doing so occasionally.
Both groups were asked if they could think of circumstances under which they would drive in the full knowledge they were over the limit. In the over 45 age group, just over 45 per cent of men and 32 per cent of women said they could, with the majority citing examples such as “a medical emergency” or “a matter of life or death” as examples.
Among the younger drivers, 28.7 per cent of men and 25 per cent of women said there were circumstances in which they would knowingly break the law but their reasons for doing so were more flippant. One young man said he would risk driving while over the limit “if I was at a party and the booze ran out.” Another said he would do it “if it was too cold to walk home.”
The groups were also asked if they wanted to see a reduction in the current blood-alcohol limit of 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood. An astonishing 93.9 per cent of the younger drivers said they wanted it to remain the same, with 75.9 per cent of the over 45s voting for no change.
Asked if penalties for drink-driving should be increased, 63.9 per cent of under 25s said “no” compared to 82.4 per cent in the older age bracket. Of the 34.5 per cent of young drivers who did support tougher penalties, more than 17% of them said, unprompted, that they would like to see anyone convicted of drink-driving banned for life. The same penalty was mentioned by just 0.9 per cent of the one quarter of the over 45s who wanted harsher punishment for drunk drivers.
More young women then young men (56.6 per cent compared to 47.9 per cent) knew that the UK’s current blood-alcohol limit is 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood. In the older age group, 34.5 per cent of men, compared to 33.9 per cent of women, knew the legal limit.
When it came to the maximum penalty for driving or attempting to drive while unfit through drink, 49 per cent of both men and women over 45 knew that it is six months in prison, a £5,000 fine and a 12-month ban. Among younger drivers, 55 per cent of women and 46.5 per cent of men were aware of the penalty.
Among the over 45s, almost 34 per cent of women and 29 per cent of men knew that a drink-driving endorsement stays on the licence for 11 years. This compared to 41.6 per cent of women under 25 and 21.9 per cent of men.
Moto’s managing director Brian Lotts said: “We were amazed by some of these results. We thought that the younger generation of drivers, who have grown up in the breathalyser years, would have been firmly against drink-driving.
“But the survey results show that over half of the young male driver
