Something You May Not Have Known About Drink Driving
Thursday, 1. March 2018
Did you know that the police can issue a ‘marker’ on the cars registered to drivers who have previously been disqualified for drink driving? No, I didn’t either but they can and in some counties they do. But it depends upon the force.
The idea is to flag up drivers wh have offended once and keep an eye on them. Research has shown that 12% of those banned for drink driving re-offend, rising to 30% of high-risk offenders caught at more than twice the legal limit. I would caveat that by saying that those % figures apply to those who are caught, with so few traffic cops on the road now I would suggest that the figure is probably higher.
This process doesn’t just apply to drink driving, it can apply to any offender suspected of possible re-offending. The police attache a ‘digital marker’ to the offender’s vehicles. Automatic Number Plate Recognition (APNR) cameras can then alert police to the driver’s status to help them better target known offenders.
However, Auto Express found out that only a handful of police forces take advantage of this facility and digitally mark vehicles. Cheshire police have 1,041 active markers which create an intelligence slide for every disqualified motorist containing personal details and any vehicle registered to them at the time of disqualification.
In Cheshire, between 2010 and 2016 57% of all banned drivers lost their licence as a result of drink driving. Merseyside police has a policy that markers will be attached once a driver is convicted and/or disqualified from driving. At the other extreme, the Met and City of London Police are two of the forces that admit to not using intelligence markers.
The Met subsequently clarified, when asked, that they would do so if there was ‘credible evidence’ that someone was driving while disqualified. West Yorkshire, in the meantime, said that they felt the attachment of intelligent markers to all drink drivers was neither ‘justified or proportionate.’ Although they admitted to having 80 live Markers.
Well, you learn something every day! Hope I provided that something for you today. By Graham Hill
