In accordance with section 1 (1) (b) of the Act our response is
provided below;
Number of qualifying Road Traffic Collisions
(RTC)
Please find below the number of Fatal and Serious RTCs where
alcohol was recorded as being a causation factor (not necessarily
between 50 and 80 mg per 100ml of blood - see notes below).
Unfortunately, information relating to alcohol usage was only
available for the past 5 years. The stats are as follows:
Fatal and Serious RTCs
| Year |
Fatal |
Serious |
| 2004 |
16 |
0 |
| 2005 |
11 |
64 |
| 2006 |
9 |
59 |
| 2007 |
3 |
48 |
| 2008 |
5 |
38 |
Details of the blood alcohol level of the individuals
involved
The ability to provide data relating to blood alcohol level of
an individual is hampered by several issues.
- This data is recorded manually in a file in the breath
test room at each custody suite.
- The Mg of alcohol is also supposed to be present in the
custody log in a person's custody record . This is a free text
field that is not searchable in a reliable way. In order to locate
the information reliably we would need to search under each
occurrence, find the arrest record and then look within the custody
log. This is a process that would exceed the limit. Also, we can
not guarantee that in every case the Mg of alcohol will in fact be
recorded in the custody log and so carrying out the search may not
even provide us with answers for each case.
- If one of the drivers involved in the RTC is the
fatality, the alcohol level would only be tested in the
post-mortem. Therefore, the coroners would hold information on
this.
Other factors to consider
A driver may be arrested for an offence at the scene and then
whilst in custody placed on an approved device which would give a
reading of ugs, which is alcohol in breath, so not exactly what was
requested in any case.
The majority of drivers would have a screening breath test at
the roadside, where breath screening devices before 2009 did not
provide the police officer or the force with the actual breath test
result in figures, only pass, warn, fail. It is not possible
therefore to give anyone any figures for how many were between
50-80mg per 100ml as we will not hold this information.
All drivers in this range and below with a slight reading would
show as negative or warn.
Therefore all the information requested is not held. To retrieve
what little information we may hold is likely to exceed the
appropriate limit, as it would require a search of all fatal post
mortem results and all custody records following an arrest at an
accident scene. The appropriate limit is defined in the Data
Protection and Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit)
Regulations 2004, which is covered by statutory Instrument Number
3244 of 2004. Furthermore, section 12 of the Freedom of Information
Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse to respond to a
request for information where the cost of compliance would exceed
the appropriate limit as defined by the above mentioned
regulations.
Some of this information may be held by Coroners if a sample of
blood is taken from a deceased person as part of the post mortem
investigation, however the HM Coroner's Office are not subject to
Freedom of Information legislation.
For your information and in order to assist you, the Transport
Research Laboratory (TRL Ltd) Crawthorne House, Nine Mile Ride,
Wokingham RG40 3GA act on behalf of the Department for Transport by
collating available blood/alcohol data for fatal road accidents
only, after obtaining the information from Coroners in England and
Wales, and the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland. TRL publish data
prior to 2007 which can be obtained from leaflet LF 2104 held in
the Reports and Publications Section at the following link:TRL