Safe Speed Forums

Huge driving test scam uncovered

Tens of thousands of people are paying fraudsters to sit their driving test for them, the BBC has learned.

The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) says imposters charge up to £500 and can have taken more than 200 tests each.

The scam works when the fraudsters pass themselves off as the person in the photo on the provisional licence that candidates must bring to their test.

The DSA described the problem, the scale of which has only recently become clear, as serious.

Difficult to spot

The head of the DSA's fraud team, Andy Rice, said: "It is quite common for them to do over a 100, sometimes over 200 tests, before we're in a position to arrest them. We're into the tens of thousands."

Many of the fraudsters have sat hundreds of tests at different driving centres around the country.

If they pass the test, the person paying them is granted a full licence - despite having never sat a practical road examination.

Ashley Bateman, a driving examiner in Nottingham, explained that it could be difficult to spot those trying to cheat the system.

"If their face looked the same shape and they had same colour eyes and things like that, there is a chance then that it would be difficult for the examiner to identify there's a problem," he said.

The AA's head of road safety, Andrew Howard, said he was shocked at the size of the problem and he believed it could be related to the increasing difficulty of the driving test.

"As the tests get harder to make the roads safer, more and more people will do whatever it takes to get around the hard exam," he said.

He also pointed out that drivers who have not passed a test are up to nine times more likely to have an accident, and it is more likely to be a serious one.

Lethal drivers

There are already cases reaching the courts.

On Monday, two men from Oldham were convicted of obtaining driving licences by deception.

Shazad Akhtar, 34, was sentenced to 200 hours community service and ordered to pay £500 costs after pleading guilty to 22 counts of obtaining and attempting to obtain driving licences by deception.

The DSA, which gathers evidence before handing it on to police, has run 1,200 investigations into the activity so far.

The fear is that the figures are the tip of the iceberg and that there are many more untested and potentially lethal drivers on the roads.

Dont worry - a few more speed cameras would root them out.... wouldn't it?

On Monday, two men from Oldham, Greater Manchester, were convicted of obtaining driving licences by deception.

Shazad Akhtar, 34, of Bolton Street, was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay £500 costs after pleading guilty to 22 counts of obtaining and attempting to obtain driving licences by deception.

Mushtaq Ahmed, 37, of Roundthorn Road, was fined £200 for obtaining a driving licence by deception.

It's not been mentioned directly, but all the reference cases I could find had Asian or similar names!
Anyone check their local new archives for evidence of this?

This thread starts with a BBC report. They would never include any comment that this identity problem is probably more prevalent in the non-white communities.

When I heard this piece of non-news I thought it was going to be a "this is why we need ID cards" propaganda release.

It also ties in with my very un-pc observation that BAD asian drivers (no, I'm not saying that all asian drivers are bad) appear to have a particular style of discourteously bad driving-to the point of me being able to say' Asian' and being 90% correct before seeing the driver's face. I suspect I'm going into the murky world of upbringing and cultural attitudes here so I'll shut up on the subject now.

This thread starts with a BBC report. They would never include any comment that this identity problem is probably more prevalent in the non-white communities.

When I heard this piece of non-news I thought it was going to be a "this is why we need ID cards" propaganda release.

I'm afraid I agree. there is definitely an Asian style of driving....

As for the BBC's reporting style, it compares very closely with the postal voting scandal a while back, when they did everything in their power to avoid giving the impression it was predominantly an Asian phenomenon.