Malaysia’s drink driving problem: How big is it? What the numbers actually say

The fatality rate has steadily gone down every year except for a marginal increase in 2016, with the figure down from 3.21 deaths per every 10,000 vehicles in 2011 to 1.97 deaths per every 10,000 vehicles on the road in 2019.

(MMO) – Drink driving has recently become a hot topic again in Malaysia, following a spate of fatal road accidents involving drivers suspected of driving while intoxicated with alcohol.

Even as the Malaysian government has pledged to introduce new laws with harsher punishments, the issue has quickly snowballed into calls from PAS for action ranging from proposals for fewer premises allowed to sell alcohol to suspension of sales and even the eventual shutting down of the alcohol industry in Malaysia.

But what do we actually know of drink driving in Malaysia? How big is this problem? How many individuals in the country die each year from accidents caused by drink driving?

Here’s a quick look by Malay Mail at all the facts and figures on drink driving in Malaysia, based on news reports and  limited data available:

1. How many deaths did drink driving accidents cause in recent years?

From the Transport Ministry’s November 13, 2018 written Parliamentary reply to Tumpat MP Datuk Che Abdullah Mat Nawi, police figures showed that the number of persons who died due to drink driving accidents were 49 (2010), 33 (2011), before going up markedly to 136 (2012) and continuing on a general upward trend of 207 (2013), 193 (2014), 229 (2015) and 237 (2016).

Since the peak of 237 deaths in 2016, the number has fallen to 58 in 2017 and 54 in 2018, according to a Transport Ministry presentation carried on the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s (UNESCAP) website.

For the eight-year period from 2011 to 2018, a total of 1,147 people lost their lives in drink driving accidents in Malaysia, based on these figures.

From the same Transport Ministry data, drink driving accidents were also shown to have resulted in 539 individuals being seriously injured from 2011 to 2018, and 595 suffering minor injuries during the same eight-year period. (The figures for 2010 were omitted in Malay Mail’s tally due to possible discrepancies in the figures provided by the Transport Ministry.)

In other words, around 2,281 individuals were affected by drink driving accidents in Malaysia from 2011 to 2018, with about half of them dying and about half of them either suffering serious or minor injuries.

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