The government announced this week that a panel of experts will be appointed to consider the practicalities of changing drug driving law, which Brake argues is long overdue.
Currently, it is not a specific offence to drive with illegal drugs in your system, only to drive while impaired by drugs. This presents the challenge of having to prove impairment for someone to be prosecuted for drug driving, so frequently these highly dangerous drivers escape justice. Alongside this obstacle, police still don’t have the equipment they need to detect drugs at the roadside, despite successive governments promising progress on the development of drugalyser devices. Currently, police use a ‘Field Impairment Test’, which involves various tests like walking in a straight line to gauge impairment. The trouble is, this is subjective, unreliable, and there aren’t huge numbers of police trained to do it. Yet in other countries, drugalysers are already being used successfully for roadside screening.
We don’t know exactly how many people are killed and injured by drug drivers in the UK because this data isn’t available, but there are numerous indications that drug driving is a widespread and deadly menace. Coinciding with the government’s announcement, Brake and Direct Line revealed research showing a horrifying one in nine young drivers (17-24) admit driving on drugs at least once in the past year – a slight increase from our survey four years ago, and a rate that’s four times higher than among older drivers.
We also know that illegal drugs can be lethal behind the wheel. Brake regularly supports families whose lives have been devastated, cruelly and needlessly, by a death or serious injury at the hands of a driver on drugs, and we bear witness to the appalling suffering they endure. At the same time, academic evidence demonstrates that a range of illegal drugs affect the skills, coordination and judgment required for driving. We therefore believe it is fair to assume that drivers with these drugs in their system are impaired, in the same way that we do through our drink drive law.
Brake has been campaigning for drugalysers and a law on driving on drugs for many years, urging our government to learn from regimes introduced successfully in countries like Germany to catch drug drivers. We have also been working to support the family of Lillian Groves in their campaigning, which has been determined and courageous. Lillian Groves was tragically killed age 14 outside her house by a driver who had been smoking cannabis. Her killer served just eight weeks in prison. Her family has gone on to campaign for ‘Lillian’s Law’ through the media, an online petition which Brake is promoting, and by lobbying politicians, including meeting David Cameron in November. Following this meeting the Prime Minister agreed that change was needed and promised to speed up the process.
We are therefore extremely encouraged to see what looks like a positive step on this critical issue. We hope the expert panel announced this week is a sign of rapid movement towards changing the law, rather than further delay. We will be continuing to work with the Groves family to call for the approach we must take to tackle drug driving, which is long-overdue: zero tolerance.
Read about Brake and Direct Line’s survey of young drivers on drug driving
Sign the Groves family’s petition calling for Lillian’s Law
Support Brake’s not a drop, not a drag campaign for zero tolerance on drink and drug driving
Read the government’s announcement on a drug driving expert panel
