Facts For Liberty: Pub deregulation lead to less accidents

By Rasmus Brygger

We here at Students For Liberty want to share some of the many success stories of liberty worldwide, so we have launched a series of “Facts For Liberty” in an attempt to tell you just why we think that liberty is the way to solve many of the world’s problems.

The story we’re trying to tell here isn’t about how one reform suddenly turned everything alright – many of the countries mentioned still have many issues – but rather that a little good can come out of trusting each other and believing that the market and the communities are able to solve problems better than centralized agencies and politicians. Feel very free to share these facts on social media or print them out and use them on campus for tabling purposes.

England and Wales liberalized their pub closing laws – leading to less traffic accidents on weekend nights.

England and Wales used to have laws forcing pubs to close at 11 p.m. – which in many cases led to binge drinking combined with drunk driving. The goverment decided to soften the law and allowing the pubs to close as late as 5 a.m. The result? Traffic accidents on Friday and Saturday nights fell drastically.