The Fleet Safety Forum, a division of Brake, the road safety charity, is calling on fleets to ensure their drivers aren’t under the influence of alcohol or drugs behind the wheel with a new campaign called ‘Face Facts’.

Fleet managers can order a poster and e-guidance campaign pack alerting drivers and managers to the dangers of drink and drug driving, and explaining how to identify and prevent drink and drug driving in fleets.

The hard hitting poster, ‘Face Facts’, shows a driver’s face split in half, on the one side unaffected by drugs or alcohol, and on the other side exhibiting the tell tale signs of drugs or alcohol. The poster has been produced with sponsorship from drug screening and testing company Dtec International and is the first in a series of new posters that will raise awareness of the seven ‘golden rules’ of Brake’s Pledge2DriveSafely. The e-guidance explains how to identify drink and drug abuses in the workplace through screening and testing procedures and how to create a culture of zero tolerance of alcohol and drugs.

Brake research shows at-work drivers are a high risk group for drink and drug driving:

  • More than twice as many at-work drivers admit to drinking three or more units of alcohol before driving compared with drivers who don’t drive for work (14% of at-work drivers compared with 6% of other drivers).
  • A third of at-work drivers (33%) admitted driving first thing after having drunk a lot of alcohol the night before, compared to a fifth of other drivers (21%).
  • One in 33 drivers (3%) admit drug driving.

Despite being widely considered taboo by the public, drink and drug driving is still a huge killer on our roads. More than 11,000 people in the UK were killed or hurt by drink or drug drivers in 2008. More than one in ten road deaths is caused by a driver over the legal alcohol limit. In the UK, 269 people were killed by drivers over the drink drive limit in 2008 and additional deaths are caused by drivers who have drunk alcohol but are under the drink drive limit, which is a high limit compared with most other European countries.

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