Global Drink-Driving Deaths Fell 28% Since 2010, Report Finds

A new global report released on Tuesday by the International Alliance for Responsible Drinking said deaths linked to drink-driving fell faster than overall road injury deaths worldwide between 2010 and 2024, pointing to progress in enforcement, public awareness and road safety policy, even as low-income countries moved in the opposite direction.

The report, based on data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease 2024 study, found that age-standardized road injury mortality from all risk factors declined by 13% over the period. Mortality attributed to alcohol in road injuries fell by 28%.

The findings arrive ahead of the United Nations High-Level Meeting on Road Safety later this month, at a point when the U.N. Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 has reached its midpoint. The global plan tied to that effort calls for cutting by half the number of road traffic injuries and deaths related to drivers using alcohol and other psychoactive substances by 2030.

The report argues that long-running action against drink-driving is producing measurable results in many parts of the world. It points to declines across much of Europe, Australasia, North America, South America and parts of Africa and Asia. But it also says progress has been uneven by income level and geography.

According to the analysis, alcohol-attributable road injury mortality declined by 30% in high-income countries and by 41% in upper-middle-income countries from 2010 to 2024. Lower-middle-income countries recorded a smaller decline of 12%. In low-income countries, however, the rate increased by 26%, leaving the 2024 mortality rate at twice the global average.

That gap is one of the clearest findings in the report. While the global trend shows improvement, the burden remains concentrated in places with weaker enforcement systems, fewer resources for policing and trauma care, and less capacity to sustain prevention campaigns.

Julian Braithwaite, president and chief executive of IARD, said the data showed that “progress is possible” but that stronger implementation and enforcement of drink-driving laws were still needed. He also called for more public awareness efforts, innovation and partnerships among governments, civil society and private companies.

The report relies on estimates from IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study rather than World Health Organization figures. That distinction matters because WHO and GBD use different methods and produce different estimates for alcohol-related road deaths. IARD said those figures should not be treated as directly comparable measures of the same thing, though GBD data can still be used to track trends across countries and over time.

In its methodology section, the report notes that WHO’s estimates attribute a larger share of road traffic deaths to alcohol than GBD does. For 2019, WHO estimated that 23% of road traffic deaths worldwide were attributable to alcohol, while GBD put that share at about 3.1%. The difference reflects separate risk models and source data rather than a change in direction of travel.

Even with those caveats, country-level patterns in the GBD data show broad declines in many developed markets where drink-driving laws have been tightened over decades and enforcement has become more systematic. Countries including Ireland, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Japan, France, Germany and Switzerland posted large reductions in alcohol-attributable road injury mortality over the period covered.

The United States did not follow that pattern as clearly. The report shows U.S. alcohol-attributable road injury mortality at 0.8 deaths per 100,000 people in both 2010 and 2024, a rise of 4% after rounding in the underlying estimates. That places the country among those where progress has stalled rather than accelerated.

Other countries also recorded increases. Among them were the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia and Cambodia. In some African countries with already high rates, such as Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo, the burden also rose.

The report includes a second set of findings drawn from the Vias Institute’s E-Survey of Road Users’ Attitudes covering 39 countries. Those results suggest that public attitudes against drink-driving are strong almost everywhere surveyed, but behavior does not always match those views.

Across those countries, between 90% and 98% of respondents said drink-driving was socially unacceptable in their communities. Yet self-reported behavior remained concerning. On average across regions, between 10% and 14% of respondents said they had driven when they may have been over the legal blood alcohol limit.

That mismatch between social norms and conduct is one reason researchers and policymakers continue to focus on enforcement rather than awareness alone. The report says changing attitudes is important but not enough without visible policing, legal consequences and technologies such as ignition interlocks.

WHO has made a similar point in recent road safety work. According to IARD’s summary of international guidance, only 47 out of 170 countries reviewed by WHO had both drink-driving laws and effective enforcement in place. In many places laws exist on paper but are weakly applied or poorly understood by drivers.

The report highlights ignition interlocks as one evidence-based tool for repeat offenders. These devices require a driver to provide a breath sample before starting a vehicle and can prevent operation if alcohol levels exceed legal limits. Some systems also require repeated tests during a trip.

IARD is a not-for-profit group backed by major beer, wine and spirits producers including AB InBev, Diageo, Heineken, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi and Molson Coors. Because it represents industry interests while promoting harm reduction measures, its reports are likely to draw scrutiny from public health groups that have long argued for stronger regulation of alcohol marketing and sales alongside education campaigns.

The organization says its members support a “whole-of-society” approach that combines legislation, enforcement, public messaging and private-sector cooperation. The report lists examples from several countries where producers or trade groups funded breath-testing devices, awareness campaigns or training programs with police or transport agencies.

Among them was a campaign in France that placed breathalyzer kiosks in nightlife venues across 20 cities this year. In Cambodia, IARD said an earlier program with local partners helped raise awareness of blood alcohol concentration limits and reduce self-reported intoxicated driving among surveyed participants. In India, Diageo has worked with authorities on digital training modules tied to licensing processes. In North America, Molson Coors said its long-running free transit ride programs around holidays had provided more than nine million rides.

Those examples form part of IARD’s broader argument that industry can play a role in reducing harmful drinking behaviors without waiting for formal regulation alone. Critics may question how far producer-backed campaigns can go when companies also profit from alcohol sales. Still, the new data add weight to one narrow point: where anti-drink-driving measures are sustained over time, deaths linked to alcohol on the road have generally fallen.

The report stops short of saying current progress is enough to meet the U.N.’s 2030 target. Instead it presents a mixed picture: meaningful gains at the global level, sharper gains than overall road safety trends would suggest for alcohol-related deaths specifically, but serious setbacks in poorer countries where institutional capacity remains limited.

That uneven record is likely to shape discussion at the U.N. meeting this month as governments review what has worked since 2021 and where efforts need to intensify before the end of the decade. For road safety officials, one message from the data is straightforward: drink-driving deaths can be reduced, but not evenly or automatically, and not without continued pressure on laws, enforcement systems and driver behavior.