Drink-drive surge
DEATHS RELATED TO BOOZE AT NEW HIGH
Drink-driving deaths are up to their highest level in a decade, sparking calls to slash the legal limit.
Around 280 people were killed on roads in 2019 in incidents involving alcohol, figures from the Department of Transport reveal.
It is the highest number of fatalities since 2009 linked to drink-driving – which now accounts for 16% of all road deaths. The figures also showed a shocking rise in people killed or severely hurt in crashes where at least one driver was over the limit.
Motoring groups are now calling for reviews of the legal alcohol limit for drivers, a rise in roadside testing and the introduction of “alco-locks” to stop people with previous convictions driving under the influence.
Campaigners from the AA have called for zero-tolerance of drink driving among novice drivers.
The Department of Transport says their data is based on figures taken by police and coroners from accidents in 2019.
Joshua Harris, from road safety charity Brake, said: “Despite a supposedly proud road safety record, improvement on UK roads is stagnating and in need of a jump start.”
STUDENT Libby Squire’s killer was caught by a cartoon drawing.
A month before butcher Pawel Relowicz raped and murdered the 21year-old, he was seen peering through another student’s window as she danced around in her bra.
A cartoonist pal who saw the Peeping Tom scribbled down an image then warn others.
Then another female student who saw the cartoon and a photo of the suspect on the news realised they were one and the same – and that she had seen him pleasuring himself in the street in front of her.
She took screenshots of both images and sent them to police.
They went to the spot where she said he targeted her and found circulated it to a condom bearing Relowicz’s DNA.
Yesterday he was jailed for life with a minimum of 27 years at Sheffield Crown Court after being convicted of Libby’s rape and murder in Hull in February 2019.
Libby’s mum Lisa told the court she “longs to die” so she can “be with her girl” as knowing she was not there when her daughter needed her will “haunt me for the rest of my life”. traces of