Friday 28 November 2014

Drinking driving statistics

Moneysupermarket compiled statistics on how prevalent drink driving is around the UK.

The results are reassuringly unsurprising. As you'd expect, the prevalence is much lower in large towns with good public transport and/or high muslim populations.

6 comments:

Bayard said...

"how prevalent drink driving is around the UK."

Er no, it shows how prevalent getting caught for drink driving is round the UK. Out here in the sticks where you don't see a copper from year's end to year's end, there could be and probably are, lots of drink drivers getting away with it. A former friend of mine was in the habit of driving whilst incapable of standing and she never got caught, once.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, your example proves nothing - the whole point of the research is that being caught for drink driving is highest out in the sticks (no public transport, long distances to travel etc).

So if we go with your logic, then drink driving out in the sticks is not just twice as prevalent, as the research showed, but maybe three or four times as prevalent.

Bayard said...

It depends what you mean by "the sticks". To you, it seems it means anywhere outside a major city. To me it means anywhere outside a minor town. Market towns are usually crawling with police on Friday and Saturday nights, which means that more people get caught there, but also means that the same police are not out looking for drink drivers in the depths of the countryside.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B,, it would be helpful if you clicked through to the lists of areas with relatively low and relatively high numbers of drink driving arrests before you start inventing possible interpretations and explanations.

My explanations are the most likely.

Bayard said...

I did, which was when I noticed that a) the statistics were for towns and cities only and b) for the number of arrests made. Now, it is my experience that rural towns usually have a high police presence on the nights when people are likely to be out drinking and that truly rural areas, i.e. outside even the smallest town, never have a high police presence at all. So your chances of being caught drink-driving when going from point A in the depths of the countryside to point B, are pretty minimal, so long as you don't go through a town on the way.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B: "The statistics were for towns and cities only"

The statistics were collected and sorted by postcodes. It's not just towns and cities which have postcodes!

Perhaps for some bizarre reason, they only published results for "towns and cities", but you are just making this claim with not much to back it up.