Youngsters take drink-driving to a ten-year high

After more than 30 years of publicity campaigns, the antidrink driving message appears to have skipped a generation, officers warned.

Drivers in their teens and early 20s now account for a quarter of all those arrested for being over the limit.

Safety campaigners last night linked the findings to a drop in the number of traffic police on patrol, as forces rely increasingly on speed cameras to keep the roads safe.

Britain's binge-drinking culture was also said to have contributed to an increasingly carefree attitude to the law among the young.

A BBC survey of police forces in England and Wales uncovered mounting concern among senior road safety officers.

Scotland Yard said the youngest drivers made up a disproportionate number of offenders and casualties in drink-driving incidents, and called for a major effort to revitalise the antidrinkdriving message.

Met Superintendent Dave Page added: "About a quarter of all arrests are people between 17 and 24, which is obviously very worrying."

Sergeant Ivan Stafford of Leicestershire Police said: "Figures from our Christmas drinkdrive campaign show that out of 142 drivers who tested positive for alcohol, 69 were men under the age of 30.

"They're the majority of the casualties, they're the majority of the offenders. And the numbers of people being killed in drinkrelated accidents have increased dramatically.

"They're killing themselves and they're mutilating themselves, which is such a tragic waste of life."

The latest figures for drink-driving in England and Wales are due out in July, but police sources indicated that the statistics are the worst for a decade.

Between 1996 and 1999, the number of deaths caused by drunk drivers fell dramatically from 580 a year to 460, but latest provisional figures are understood to show them climbing back to around 550 per year.

During the 1990s drink-related deaths on the road fell, while the number of motorists breathalysed went up.

But from 1999 those trends were reversed, with roadside tests falling from 765,000 per year to 578,000 in 2005, while drink-related deaths rose.

West Yorkshire's-head of roads policing, Inspector Russell Clark, called for an information campaign to target younger teenagers.

He said: "We need to start educating not just the drivers of today but the drivers of tomorrow, the 12 and 13-year-olds who are going to be coming on to our roads in the next few years."

Paul Smith, founder of the Safespeed road safety campaign, urged forces to focus on restoring traffic patrols.

He said: "Over the past decade that deterrent effect has diminished. The wrong road safety message is being received. Trying to police the roads using robot cameras has not worked."

The Department of Transport said it was planning a summer publicity campaign aimed at men in the 17-29 age group.

Drink-driver Christopher Vickers left a 14-year-old boy dead on the pavement when he lost control during a 100mph police chase.

The 23-year-old had drunk at least three pints in a pub then climbed into his Vauxhall Vectra to drive home.

Police in a marked patrol car spotted him as he weaved in and out of traffic on the A57 in Sheffield and sped up to negotiate roadworks.

The officers tried to stop him with their flashing blue lights and sirens, but Vickers accelerated away on to a slip road.

Approaching the junction at 100mph, he lost control. The car flew 40ft in the air before hitting a parked Rover which struck 14-year-old Luke Mellor, crushing him to death.

The schoolboy had been walking with his 16-year-old brother and two girls, pushing his bike.

Vickers, of Manor Park, Sheffield - and of previously good character - suffered only a minor injury. He was jailed for five years last September for causing death by dangerous driving.