Citation

Everest J. Proc. Int. Counc. Alcohol Drugs Traffic Safety Conf. 1993; 1993: 924-932.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, The author(s) and the Council, Publisher International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper describes the significant influence of drinking on adult pedestrian injury and fatality rates in Great Britain (GB). For a two-year period starting in 1988, a major Oxford hospital recorded the incidence of alcohol intoxication among the road accident casualties that it handled. Data were examined, relating to road users aged 17 to 70, who attended the hospital within eight hours of their accidents. A high proportion of pedestrians, attending the accident and emergency departments, had been drinking, and were often drunk. Extrapolating these results to the whole of GB, about 13,000 pedestrians per year are injured after drinking alcohol, and about 560 pedestrians are killed. Since 1967, blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) of road accident fatalities in England and Wales have been recorded, using coroners' returns; Scottish data were added from 1978 on. The data relate to all road users aged at least 16, who died within 12 hours of a road accident. The paper gives details of pedestrian fatality rates and statistics, in relation to BACs, accident times, and age, sex and occupation group of fatality. The number of pedestrian fatalities with BAC above 80mg/100ml did not fall during the 1980s, compared with a halving of drinking and driving fatalities in general.