DRINK drive deaths in Dorset have risen by more than the national average.

Six people were killed in collisions recorded by police as “impaired by alcohol” last year compared with four in 2011.

Nationally the rise is around a quarter, prompting a call for a change in the law from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

The organisation is pushing the government to lower the drink-drive limit in a bid to reduce the death toll on Britain’s roads.

But Paul Anderson, whose teenage son, Ben, was killed in a head-on collision with a drink-driver, has called for “zero tolerance”.

Ben, 19, died in May last year and since then driver Benjamin Southall, a soldier, has been jailed for 32 months.

“It has caused heartbreak, grief and pain for so many people” said Mr Andrews.

“So many people have been affected, from family and friends of Ben to the driver’s family and the emergency services, people who were called to the scene. Zero tolerance is the only way to deal with it. Don’t go near the car if you have had a drink – walk or pay a fiver for a taxi.”

Just last month Poole drink driver Steven Anderson was jailed for seven years after falling asleep at the wheel and causing a fatal crash on the M3. Anderson, of Forest Road, ploughed into another vehicle near Winchester and the crash claimed the life of a 55-year-old man from Gosport.

“The increase in drink-drive deaths in 2012 is very disturbing,” said Kevin Clinton, RoSPA’s head of road safety.

“Often it is an innocent person who suffers, not just the driver who was over the drink-drive limit. A lower drink-drive limit would save many lives each year.”

Wareham mum Debbie Orchard spoke out after her son, 24-year-old Richard Blair, died when he crashed his motorbike into a parked car while two-and-a-half times over the drink drive limit.

In a tearful interview, she told the Daily Echo: “I don’t know what he was thinking – I think he probably though he felt all right. If he knew what we were going through he would never have got on that bike.”

Dorset Police Traffic Inspector Matt Butler said: “We will continue to target those who continue to put their lives and others at risk by drink driving. There is no safe limit so any time you are going out for a drink you need to plan how you are going to get home without driving.”