Mims Davies – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mims Davies on 2015-12-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many fatalities were caused by traffic collisions involving persons under the influence of (a) cannabis and (b) illegal drugs in each of the last five years.

Andrew Jones

The statistical data that the police provide to the Department about personal-injury road traffic accidents does not include explicit information on the use of illegal drugs. The data do not attribute blame or responsibility for the cause of the accident either.

However, the records do include information on what factors police officers thought had contributed to the accident. The contributory factor ‘Impaired by drugs (illicit or medicinal)’ is recorded when a police officer thought that a driver or rider was affected by drugs. This factor not only includes the use of illegal drugs but also medicinal drugs, whether prescription or ‘over the counter’, which could have had an effect on someone’s driving. No split between illegal and medicinal drugs is available.

The number of fatalities in reported road accidents in Great Britain in which the contributory factor ‘Impaired by drugs (illicit or medicinal)’ was reported for 2010 to 2014 can be found in the table below.

It should be noted that contributory factors are only recorded when police officers attended the scene of the accidents; this should be the case for the majority of fatal accidents. The factors are based on police officers’ judgements at the scene and may not include factors that were only discovered after a full investigation of the accident was carried out.

Drug driving is a menace which is why the Coalition government created a new offence of driving with a specified controlled drug in the body above the specified limit for that drug, with the aim of making it easier for the police to tackle those who drive after taking illegal drugs.