China sees over 40% drop in drunken driving cases

Thanks to great efforts in preventing drunken driving, China saw a drop in cases last year, Hou Yahui, an official from the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said on Monday.

From January to November, some 303,000 people were indicted on the charge of dangerous driving, down 42.3 percent year-on-year, he said, adding that the decline was due to new guidelines on drunken driving that unify the standards of case handling and improve judicial efficiency.

In late 2023, China updated the guidelines to further clarify that those causing traffic accidents or other offenses due to drunk driving will be harshly punished, but people who surrender and confess after drunken driving or voluntarily plead guilty can be granted a lenient punishment.

Offenders involved in minor incidents can also be exempted from prosecutors, and administrative punishments can be imposed for offenses deemed significantly minor, according to the guidelines.

In 2011, Chinese Criminal Law introduced the crime of dangerous driving, with drunken driving being an example of this behavior. The updated guidelines was to adapt changing situations of drunken driving crimes, unify law enforcement and judicial standards, and strictly regulate the procedures of tackling drunken driving cases, Hou said.

In short, the guidelines further specify the factors such as the degree of drunkenness, type of motor vehicle, road conditions, driving time, speed, distance, consequences, confession and repentance of drunken driving, so as to guarantee a fitting punishment for the crime.

Data previously released by SPP showed that dangerous driving has consistently ranked first in the number of cases since 2019, with over 80 percent of people sentenced to less than three years in prison for such crimes. Dangerous driving offenses accounted for 18.2 percent of all prosecutions in 2022.

Hou said that the fight against organized crimes and offenses that damaged people's livelihood was also intensified last year, leading to drop in relevant criminal cases.

For instance, from January to November, Chinese prosecutors dealt with 1,768 cases involving organized crimes, seeing a decrease compared with the same period in 2023.