Urgent Action Needed to Address Deadly Alcohol-Impaired Driving
Ghana is facing a devastating road safety crisis, reports BFT online. In 2023 alone, 2,494 people lost their lives in road crashes, while another 15,607 sustained injuries. During just the first five months of 2024, the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) recorded 1,267 road traffic deaths. These statistics are not just numbers; they are lives cut short and families shattered. Among the main contributing factors, alcohol-impaired driving, excessive speeding, and defective vehicles, alcohol use stands out as an avoidable risk with life-saving policy solutions.
High BAC Limit Puts Lives at Risk
Despite the clear evidence of harm, Ghana’s legal Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) limit remains at 0.08%.
This is one of the highest thresholds globally and is out of step with international best practices. Scientific studies confirm that impairment begins at much lower levels.
In fact, the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, cited in BFT online, found that drivers with a BAC between 0.05% and 0.08% are at least seven times more likely to be involved in a fatal single-vehicle crash compared to sober drivers.
Countries that adopted a 0.05% BAC limit have seen meaningful reductions in alcohol-related road crashes. For example, Japan experienced a 38% decline in such incidents after implementing this lower limit. As highlighted in a joint open letter published by Movendi International, reducing the BAC limit to 0.05% is widely recognised as an effective and science-backed prevention tool.
Alcohol’s Role in Ghana’s Crash Statistics
According to the NRSA, Ghana witnessed 14,135 road crashes in 2024, leading to 2,276 deaths and over 15,400 injuries. Up to 10% of these crashes were linked to alcohol-impaired driving.
Research revealed that 34% of non-fatal traffic accident victims in Ghana had detectable levels of alcohol in their blood. Among pedestrians, that figure was even higher at 53%.
Surveys conducted as part of a situational analysis on alcohol use in Ghana found that 60.9% of respondents believed road crashes were caused by driver alcohol use.
While the law recognises alcohol use as a major offence under the Road Traffic Act 2004 (Act 683), enforcement remains inadequate. The Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) is under-equipped to carry out roadside breath testing, limiting the impact of existing laws.
Global Norms Show the Way Forward
According to BFT online, many countries, including those in the European Union, Canada, Australia, and Japan, have adopted BAC limits of 0.05% or lower. Even Utah in the United States reduced its BAC threshold to 0.05% in 2017, resulting in a significant decline in alcohol-related traffic deaths without affecting overall alcohol consumption. These examples underline that lowering the BAC limit is a public safety intervention that protects everyone on the road.
The World Health Organization Global Status Report on Road Safety 2023 shows that specific legislation to prevent alcohol-impaired driving is reported by 166 countries.
WHO reports that 52 countries meet WHO best practice – which means that the law specifies a BAC limit of ≤0.05 g/dl for the general driving population and ≤0.02 g/dl for novice drivers. This data shows an increase of four countries meeting WHO best practice since 2018.
In early 2025, El Salvador became another country taking decisive road safety action by addressing alcohol impaired driving. El Salvador began implementing a zero-tolerance law against alcohol-impaired driving. The move came as concerns about high alcohol deaths grew louder.
Unfortunately Ghana is not among the countries that follow the WHO best practice.
The WHO has included the prevention of alcohol impaired driving in the SAFER alcohol policy blue print as one of the five most cost-effective strategies to protect people from alcohol harm. “Advancing and enforcing alcohol-impaired driving counter measures” is one key strategy because driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) is a significant public health problem that affects not only the alcohol user but also, in many cases, innocent parties such as passengers and pedestrians.
The SAFER technical document outlines what countries can do and why they should do it, as well as how concretely countries can improve road safety and public health with evidence-based action on alcohol impaired driving:
Even at low blood-alcohol levels, drivers experience problems with concentration, coordination, and identification of risks in the road environment. In addition, at a given blood-alcohol level, alcohol impaired driving crashes can be more severe or more common when high speed or poor road design are involved. DUI laws and BAC limits have been assessed as effective interventions for NCD prevention.”
The SAFER technical package: five areas of intervention at national
and subnational levels. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA
3.0 IGO.
In 2022, Movendi International published a resource article summarising the key points from the WHO manual on alcohol and road traffic crashes. This manual is part of a series of tools WHO developed together with the Global Road Safety Partnership, the FIA Foundation, and the World Bank to contribute to the United Nations (UN) resolutions on road safety. The manual provides advice, and recommendations for legislation and interventions to reduce alcohol-impaired driving. It is aimed at policy makers and road safety practitioners.
Overcoming Alcohol Industry Interference for Better Policy to Enhance Public Health and Safety
Ghana is one of the countries with laws that fail to meet international best practices in preventing alcohol impaired driving. One major reason is the alcohol industry’s opposition to impactful and evidence-based policies that would directly jeopardise their sales and profits. It means that Ghana faces severe alcohol industry interference against any initiatives to enhance public health and safety through addressing alcohol impaired driving. At the same time, the alcohol industry sponsors DUI mass media campaigns – but a new analysis by Vital Strategies reveals these efforts are largely ineffective and fail to follow best practices in road safety communication.
The alcohol industry engages in several strategies to appear socially responsible. This includes sponsoring driving under the influence of alcohol mass media campaigns, alongside other interventions that promote “responsible” alcohol consumption, including ride-sharing initiatives and designated driver programs. But independent scientific evaluations show that these initiatives are ineffective and counterproductive because they fail to improve health and safety and instead they actually promote favourable views of the alcohol industry and its products, prompting alcohol sales and consumption, instead of of lowering it.
A country where alcohol industry interference blocks road safety improvements is Colombia. It is instructive for Ghana’s challenges, too. In Colombia, road users want to feel safe. But preventable alcohol harm on Colombian roads puts many people at risk. The alcohol industry opposes these effective solutions and undermines the road safety agenda through ineffective and counter-productive “self-regulation” and Corporate Social Responsibility, that disguises alcohol brand promotions. Prioritising the SAFER alcohol policy blue print and ensuring road safety policy-making is free of conflicts of interest is the way forward in Colombia, as in Ghana, but it requires overcoming alcohol industry interference to achieve safer roads and healthier lives for people.
Reforming Ghana’s outdated BAC law is one part of the solution. Adequate and systematic enforcement is another important component. According to WHO lowering BAC limit to 0.05 g/dl or less while implementing random testing and sobriety checkpoints are among the most effective strategies to prevent alcohol-related crashes. This means equipping traffic officers with modern tools and launching continuous public education campaigns.
It is also crucial to reduce alcohol affordability, availability and the normalisation of alcohol use in social settings.
Ghana’s Ministry of Transport has initiated discussions on revising the BAC threshold, reports BFT online. Civil society organisations, including CUTS International Accra, LADA Institute, Legal Resource Centre, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS), and Vital Strategies are all backing this move. With committed political leadership and a coordinated national response, Ghana has an opportunity to save thousands of lives and align its road safety framework with international standards.