How to prevent alcohol-related accidents

Find out why drinking makes you more prone to accidents, and how to lower your risks.

Drinking alcohol makes you more prone to accidents. These range from road traffic accidents to falls, drowning, alcohol poisoning, and other unintentional injuries – and can be minor or serious.¹

Alcohol-related accidents can be fatal. Worldwide, there were around 700,000 deaths from alcohol-related injuries in 2019 – accounting for more than a quarter of the 2.6 million deaths caused by alcohol that year.²

The types of accidental injuries commonly linked to alcohol include head injuries, fractures, facial injuries, scarring, and alcohol poisoning.³

But there are things you can do to lower your risk of an alcohol-related accident, both in terms of limiting how much you drink and planning ahead.

Alcohol increases the risk of accidents

The more you drink, the more likely you are to have an accident.^4,5

The risk of injury to someone who has been drinking has been found to rise between two and five times when five to seven units are drunk in a three to six hour period.⁶ Regular heavy drinking can increase your risk of injury over the course of your life.⁷

And because everybody reacts differently to alcohol, there isn’t any ‘safe’ cut-off point for the amount of alcohol which can minimise the risk.⁸

Why alcohol increases your risk of accidents

Alcohol is a depressant. It slows down the brain and affects your body’s responses.⁹ Accidents and falls are common because of the way alcohol affects your balance and co-ordination.¹⁰

Alcohol also suppresses activity in parts of the brain associated with inhibition.¹¹

Binge drinking increases the likelihood of both becoming aggressive or angry and also being the victim of violence.¹²

Drinking alcohol can:¹³

Affect your judgement and reasoning
Slow down your reactions
Worsen your balance and coordination
Impair your vision and hearing
Make you lose concentration and feel drowsy

If you drink alcohol, this means the normal warning signals and second thoughts you might usually have about dangerous situations are less likely to happen, which can lead you to do things you might not normally do. This not only increases the risk of accidents but is part of the reason why alcohol is linked with self-harm and suicide.¹⁴

Binge drinking and accidents

A heavy drinking session also known as 'binge drinking' (more than six units of alcohol in a single session for women and more than eight units for men) is associated with an increase in risk of alcohol-related injury.^15,16,17

Drinking alcohol quickly can lead to acute alcohol poisoning which can be fatal.¹⁸There is no minimum amount of alcohol that could cause alcohol poisoning – it depends on a person’s age, sex, size, weight, how fast they have been drinking, how much they have eaten, their general health, and whether they have taken medication or drugs.¹⁹

It takes an average adult around an hour to process one unit of alcohol – although it varies a lot, from person to person.²⁰ Alcohol poisoning happens if the concentration of alcohol in your bloodstream reaches a dangerous level that stops the body from working properly.²¹

If you think someone might be experiencing alcohol poisoning – even if you have doubts – place them on their side in the recovery position and call 999 for an ambulance.

The increased risk of accidents after drinking alcohol is one of the reasons why the UK Chief Medical Officers’ (CMOs’) advise spreading your drinking evenly over three or more days to reduce accidents and injuries. That means you should never binge drink. Both men and women are advised to drink no more than 14 units a week and have several drink-free days each week – this reduces the risk of long-term health conditions related to alcohol.²²

Accidents related to drink driving

Drink driving kills. Alcohol slows down your reactions and impairs judgement, making your driving unsafe and putting you, and others, at greater risk of accidents.²³

An estimated 6,310 people were killed or injured in drink driving accidents in Great Britain in 2023.²⁴

The safest and best advice is to avoid alcohol completely if you have to drive. Even if you've been to sleep after drinking, there could still be alcohol in your system, and this could be enough to put you well over the drink driving limit and impair your ability to drive safely.

The risk of accidents is why there are strict limits on alcohol and driving across the UK.

Alcohol and drowning

Don’t try to swim if you have been drinking. Drinking alcohol impairs your judgement, balance, and coordination. It seriously affects your ability to get yourself out of trouble and will make swimming very difficult.²⁵

The Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS) say about a quarter of all adult drowning victims were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.²⁶Among people aged 18-25 who lost their lives to accidental drowning, almost half (46%) had alcohol and/or drugs in their bloodstream. Many of them drowned because they walked home alone and fell into the water.²⁷

The RLSS has a dedicated Don’t Drink and Drown campaign to try and reduce the high number of university students who drown after drinking.

How to avoid alcohol-related accidents

If you have drunk alcohol, you shouldn’t drive, operate machinery, swim, or take unnecessary risks. Remember you could still be affected by alcohol the day after a heavy drinking session.

You can also help reduce alcohol-related accidents by looking out for friends who might be behaving dangerously.

To keep short-term risks from accidents or injury low, the UK Chief Medical Officers advise you to:

Limit the total amount of alcohol you drink on any single occasion
Drink more slowly, drink with food, and alternate your drinks with water
Plan ahead to avoid problems. For example by making sure you can get home safely, or that you have people you trust with you

Staying in control

There are practical things you can do to keep your risk low:

Avoid drinking in rounds
Start drinking later
Consider only drinking with meals
Replace an alcoholic drink with an alcohol-free one. There’s more choice than ever with beer, wine, and spirits available
Try setting yourself a drink or spending limit – rather than using a debit or credit card, stop when your cash runs out
Never ‘pre-load’ with alcohol at home before going out to drink

Alcohol support services

If you are concerned that you or someone you care about has a problem with alcohol there is a lot of help available. Here you can find useful links and phone numbers to get the support you need.

Get support

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References

[1] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[2] World Health Organization. Alcohol. (28 June 2024). [Accessed 18/11/25]. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol

[3] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[4] Taylor, B., Irving, H.M., Kanteres, F., Room, R., Borges, G., Cherpitel, C., Greenfield, T. and Rehm, J. (2010). The more you drink, the harder you fall: a systematic review and meta-analysis of how acute alcohol consumption and injury or collision risk increase together. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 110(1-2), 108-116.

[5] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[6] Department of Health. (2016). UK Chief Medical Officers’ low risk drinking guidelines. [Online]

[7] Rehm, J., Gmel, G., Sempos, C.T. and Trevisan, M. (2003). Alcohol-related morbidity and mortality. Alcohol Research & Health, 27(1), 39.

[8] Sleet, D. A., Scarbrough, W., Brown, C., & Bizzell, A. (2025). Alcohol Harms, Injuries, and Health: Clinical Implications for Lifestyle Medicine. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 15598276251350863. https://doi.org/10.1177/15598276251350863

[9] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[10] Taylor, B., Irving, H.M., Kanteres, F., Room, R., Borges, G., Cherpitel, C., Greenfield, T. and Rehm, J. (2010). The more you drink, the harder you fall: a systematic review and meta-analysis of how acute alcohol consumption and injury or collision risk increase together. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 110(1-2), 108-116.

[11] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[12] Sundin, E., Landberg, J., Galanti, M. R., Room, R., & Ramstedt, M. (2022). Country-Level Heavy Episodic Drinking and Individual-Level Experiences of Harm from Others' Drinking-Related Aggression in 19 European Countries. European addiction research, 28(2), 134–142. https://doi.org/10.1159/000520079

[13] NHS website. Alcohol misuse. Risks. (4 October 2022). [Accessed 18/11/25]. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-misuse/risks/

[14] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[15] Chikritzhs, T., & Livingston, M. (2021). Alcohol and the Risk of Injury. Nutrients, 13(8), 2777. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082777

[16] Gov.UK website. Guidance Chapter 12: alcohol. (10 September 2025). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/delivering-better-oral-health-an-evidence-based-toolkit-for-prevention/chapter-12-alcohol

[17] Rossow, I., Bogstrand, S. T., Ekeberg, Ø., & Normann, P. T. (2013). Associations between heavy episodic drinking and alcohol related injuries: A case control study. BMC Public Health, 13, 1076. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-1076

[18] NHS website. Alcohol poisoning. (11 January 2023). [Accessed 18/11/25]. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-poisoning/

[19] Mirijello, A., Sestito, L., Antonelli, M., Gasbarrini, A., & Addolorato, G. (2023). Identification and management of acute alcohol intoxication. European Journal of Internal Medicine, 108, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejim.2022.08.013

[20] NHS website. Alcohol units. (27 August 2024). [Accessed 18/11/25]. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-advice/calculating-alcohol-units/

[21] NHS website. Alcohol poisoning. (11 January 2023). [Accessed 18/11/25]. Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/alcohol-poisoning/

[22] Department of Health. (2016). UK Chief Medical Officers’ low risk drinking guidelines. [Online]