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Motorists face £60 fines and three points on licence for minor accidents

Motorists at fault in minor accidents face £60 fines and three points on their licence in a clamp down on careless driving by the Government.

By David Millward, Transport Editor
Last Updated: 9:32PM GMT 23 Dec 2008

Thousands of drivers who would have escaped prosecution for collisions after simply swapping insurance details will now face likely prosecution as soon as the police become involved.

An array of trivial motoring offences in addition to minor crashes are also likely to lead to action under proposals to give police powers to issue fixed penalty notices for careless driving.

They could include eating, drinking or smoking at the wheel, reading a map, tuning a radio or arguing with a passenger.

All funds raised from the on-the-spot fines will go directly to the Treasury, which already makes more than £100 million a year from speed cameras.

The proposals triggered fears of a surge in the number of drivers being prosecuted, as happened following the introduction of speed cameras.

There were 260,000 people convicted of speeding offences in 2000-01 when speed cameras were in their infancy but by 2006-07, after they had been rolled out nationwide, this figure had reached 1.75 million.

They are contained in a Department for Transport consultation paper, which raises concerns that a sharp decline in the number of convictions for careless driving may be due to the amount of paperwork involved in the police bringing prosecutions.

"This would suggest that there are careless drivers who are currently 'getting away with it'," the document states.

Some also warned that the new system would see motorists will fall foul of police officers under pressure to prove they are cost-effective and meet targets.

"Cops aren't daft," said Kevin Delaney, Scotland Yard's former head of traffic. "They are human like the rest of us and will take the easiest option.

"The easier you make it for them to meet performance targets by issuing tickets, the more likely they are to do it."

Critics fear that making it easier for careless driving prosecutions to take place will simply mean that the Treasury will cash in from the sharp rise in income from fines.

"This smacks of trying to make a fast buck out of already heavily taxed drivers," said a spokesman for the TaxPayersAlliance.

"Obviously dangerous driving should still be penalised. Ordinary families are struggling with the credit crunch, trying to get more money from them is wrong."

The plans were described as a "bombshell" by Rob Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, and normally sympathetic to the Government's strategy. "This could lead to policing by numbers rather than policing aimed at raising standards," he said.

At present police can only prosecute motorists for careless driving through the courts. Most of those taken to court plead guilty and are penalised with points on their licence and a fine.

But the Government has been alarmed by the fall in the number of convictions for poor driving.

In 1986 there were 107,600 motorists convicted of careless driving but by 2006 this had fallen by more than 75 per cent to only 25,400.

"The level of enforcement is steadily dropping," the Government noted in the consultation paper.

This, it is believed, has resulted in an increasing number of cases of careless driving going unpunished.

Ministers believe that this is because of the burden of paperwork police have to deal with in bringing a careless driving case to court.

The Government believes that a simpler process – bringing careless driving into line with the prosecution of speeding – would "increase the chances of enforcement action being taken against demonstrably bad driving."

Such a move could add to the burden on motorists, many of whom have backed the Daily Telegraph's Fair Deal for Drivers campaign against plans to impose "green taxes" on the owners of "environmentally unfriendly" cars.

Few dispute the need to pursue blatantly bad driving, but there are fears that the new system could lower the prosecution threshold because of the ease with which fixed penalty notices can be handed out.

Motorists are expected to comply with The Highway Code and failure to do so can be construed as careless driving.

It is this which could lead to prosecutions for fiddling with the radio, listening to loud music or swigging a bottle of water.

Similarly tens of thousands of minor accidents are normally settled by drivers swapping insurance details, even if the police are called to the scene.

Now, it is feared, officers will be expected to issue a fixed penalty notice to the driver deemed to have been at fault.

Insurers paid out on 1.7 million road accidents last year, the majority of which were regarded as minor.

"We would like to know more about how the new system will be used, especially after minor accidents," said Andrew Howard, the AA's head of road safety.

"Penalties should reflect how bad the driving was, not whether or not a police officer attends the scene."

There are also fears that the offence of careless driving could be devalued by the introduction almost automated system.

Mr Delaney, who is also head of road safety at the Institute of Advanced Motorists, warned it would remove the stigma of a court appearance for bad driving.

But the Department for Transport defended the plans in the consultation.

"Bad driving puts other drivers, cyclists and pedestrians at risk and is rated by the public as the second most important road safety issue for the Government to tackle," a spokesman said.

"Making careless driving a fixed penalty offence will help the police to enforce against bad drivers who admit fault with a minimum of bureaucracy, freeing up police resources.

"But all drivers will always have the option to contest their case in court and we will work with the police to develop guidance to ensure that cases are handled correctly."

In 1986 there were 107,600 motorists convicted of careless driving but by 2006 this had fallen by more than 75 per cent to only 25,400.

"The level of enforcement is steadily dropping," the Government noted in the consultation paper.

This, it is believed, has resulted in an increasing number of cases of careless driving going unpunished.

a sharp decline in the number of convictions for careless driving may be due to the amount of paperwork involved in the police bringing prosecutions

Most people would agree that driving standards are falling and much bad driving is ignored.

However:


Is utter rubbish.

The sharp decline is almost certainly down to the police concentrating around 95% of effort on easy speeding targets on overly speed restricted roads.

For years almost everyone who has visited here, including speed vigilantes, have noted the almost total lack of traffic cops and when you do see them they are fully armed with a dodgyscope.

It has recently come to light that older safer slower drivers rather than faster more dangerous younger drivers are more likely to collect speeding convictions. The same will undoubtedly be seen with this latest scheme for tax extraction.

You can expect huge numbers of people to be prosecuted for very momentary and largely irrelevant lapses of concentration. Nobody's perfect so you had better watch your back.

PS In Gear - since in Durham you are not speed zealots - how are the careless driver prosecutions holding up ?

"Making careless driving a fixed penalty offence will help the police to enforce against bad drivers who admit fault with a minimum of bureaucracy..."

As a result of this ridiculous scheme, far less drivers will be willing to admit fault for minor bumps, for fear of the points. This will actually result in INCREASED paperwork at the Insurance Companies involved and a consequent rise in premiums...