Safer Roads UK

Summary Drink and drug driving are on the rise and so are related fatalities and injuries. Other than increasing police budgets to ensure there are sufficient roads policing officers, the government can make many legislative and policy changes to ensure that the upwards trend is reversed. Rather than burying their heads in the sand by falsely saying it is focussing on better enforcement of the current law, the government should: Make drink and drug driving laws apply to all vehicles Give police powers to administer preliminary tests on any driver on a road or public place Introduce better roadside breath testing devices Introduce better preliminary drug testing devices Lower the drink-drive limit - there's plenty of evidence and public backing supporting this Strengthen legislation for failing to provide or cooperate with testing Introduce faster and tougher, tier-based minimum disqualification periods Introduce mandatory new courses and tough penalties to rehabilitate

Summary The current legislation against using a phone while driving is wholly unfit for purpose. Police should no longer have to prove that a driver was using the phone for an interactive communication function. Mobile phone legislation should be amended so that merely holding the phone or any other kind of distracting device attracts the same Fixed Penalty of £200 and 6 points. The exact use to which the phone or device was being put should no longer be a point to prove for the police and should not result in a differentiation of penalty. This will open the door to more efficient and robust enforcement by the police and upcoming automated static camera detection systems to root out the highly dangerous smartphone epidemic many a British driver seems to be affected by. A High Court judgement on this legislation has confirmed that the law is indeed inadequate, where a driver was prosecuted for using his phone to photograph the scene of a collision while driving was acquitted (DPP v B

Summary The Government and the Department for Transport should completely overhaul the legislation surrounding speeding offences. A framework similar to the one I set out in Table 2 (image below) should be adopted. Different severities of speeding should attract different types of (fixed) penalties, with differing ranges of penalty points, disqualification and maximum fines. Minor speeding offences should not be penalised as harshly as they are now. The more serious speeding offences should carry higher maximum penalties and obligatory disqualification terms. It should be made it clear in law when speeding becomes dangerous driving. Police should be given on-the-spot powers to seize vehicles for the more serious speeding offences to provide a highly effective, immediate deterrent, similar to insurance and driving licence offences. Table 2: Introduction Following up on my post about National Speed Limits being unfit for purpose , this post examines the current speeding penalty s