I
I
|
|
|
|
|
|
| News Story 16. | News Headlines. |
| I I I |
|
|
Speeding Drivers pin the blame on others... |
| I |
| A new survey has revealed that over 700,000 drivers have avoided points on their licences by getting a partner to admit to a speeding offence. The growing practice of 'points swapping' is believed to be saving thousands of motorists a year from being banned from driving. |
| I |
| A survey of 2,000 drivers by Churchill Insurance found that 2.2 per cent admitted to taking points on behalf of their partner. With 33 million licence-holders, this is the equivalent to 726,000 drivers. A third said that they would consider asking their partners to admit to their speeding offence if it prevented them from losing their licence. The overwhelming majority of those who had taken points on behalf of a partner were women. |
| I |
| The survey follows extensive anecdotal evidence of wives accepting penalties in order to allow their husbands to keep their jobs. One in seven motorists in the survey said that they would be unable to work if they lost their licences. Police chiefs have been puzzling why the number of people being disqualified by gaining a forth three-point penalty has fallen, while the number of speeding tickets has multiplied. In 2003, 1.8 million offences were detected by sped cameras, up from 500,000 in 1999. Yet the number of people disqualified for acquiring 12 points fell from 34,000 to 33,000. |
| I |
| The RAC Foundation said that the rise in points-swapping helped to explain the discrepancy. Edmund King, the Foundation's director, said that the survey supported widespread anecdotal evidence of points fraud. He said: "The temptations are great for those who would lose their livelihoods. The wife may be faced with a choice between the family being plunged into poverty or accepting the points which her husband had incurred". |
| I |
| The survey also undermined claims that the low number of disqualifications proves that speed cameras are working. The AA Motoring Trust has argued that drivers must be learning their lesson after gaining three speeding penalties because so few went on to pick up four. |
| I |
| Paul Smith, founder of the anti-camera campaign SafeSpeed, said that it more likely that a large proportion of those drivers on the brink of a ban asked a relative or friend to take the points for any further offences. He said that points-swapping was a product of a camera-based system in which no police officer was involved in stopping the driver. |
| I |
| The Association of Chief Police Officers [ACPO] said that points-swapping was very difficult to detect and usually came to light only when a couple got divorced and the wife accused the husband of passing his points on to her. Ian Bell, ACPO's speed camera liaison officer, said that there were no routine checks on whether the person admitting to an offence was the person who has committed it: "While Gatsos photograph the rear of the vehicle, others, like Truvelos and mobile cameras, take a picture of the front and may show who was driving. But if we have got an admission by a driver, there would be no reason to check. |
|
I I |
|
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
||||
|