Generational Change and the Decline of Drink-Driving in Recent British History: Some Preliminary Findings

• In Event: EHC-WG Panel 2: Memories, Attitudes and Comparative Perspectives in Historical Criminology

Abstract

Drink-driving has declined massively in recent British history. Road collisions involving alcohol fell 76% between 1979-2022 and resulting casualties by 77% (UK Department for Transport, 2024). There were 1100 fewer drink-driving fatalities in 2022 than 1979 (UK Department for Transport, 2024). This important, sustained behavioural change does not appear correlated with population-level trends in alcohol consumption, road safety or offending. Nor is it connected to legal change. England and Wales’ drink-drive laws have not changed since 1967 and the lowering of the Scottish drink-drive limit in 2014 did not improve road safety (Haghpanahan et al, 2019). What has caused this precipitous drop in drink-driving and associated harm? Wider literature on the decline in young people’s alcohol consumption in many high-income countries over the last 20 years has increasingly foregrounded the role of generations in understanding behavioural change (e.g. Kraus et al, 2019; Burgess et al, 2022). This finding, in addition to the notoriously permissive attitude to drink-driving that prevailed in the UK in the mid-twentieth century, suggests that divergent generational norms could also help to explain the decline in drink-driving. This presentation will report preliminary findings from a pilot study of attitudes to drink-driving among different age groups. Data will be drawn from a survey of a representative sample of British adults. In particular, survey data analysis will explore the possibility that a shift in generational norms in the late twentieth century has led to the de-normalisation of drink-driving among younger age groups. The presentation will then consider the implications of these findings for understandings of trends in drink-driving in the UK and across Europe.

Author

• Henry Yeomans, University of Leeds