Richard Schooling's Blog: 21 November 2007

Date: 21 November 2007

Richard Schooling

According to The Times, "excessive" speed would be anything over 45mph in a 30mph zone or 57mph in a 40mph zone. Think how easy it would be to be caught by the latter offence on a stretch of urban dual carriageway with several changes in the speed limit. And the six-point threshold in 20mph zones - which seem to be cropping up everywhere these days - would be just 31mph.

Licence checks show that almost a third of business drivers already have at least three penalty points on their driving licences, while according to the Times' story, over a million UK motorists have six points. It's pretty clear that this proposal would - or will, since few doubt it will go through - lead to sharp rise in the number of drivers threatened with the loss of their licence.

Many of them would also face losing their livelihood as well. Courts would probably feel bound to impose longer bans (say six months) when dealing with drivers whose totting up points arose from "excessive" infringements.

Under those circumstances, how many more drivers will be tempted to try to keep the true state of their licence - or lack of one - from their employer? Every fleet manager should by now be aware of how easy it is for grey fleet drivers to pull off such a trick but it's by no means impossible for drivers of company vehicles to produce fake documentation.

Or perhaps Government's 'six points plan' will provoke a miraculous change in public behaviour, with everyone suddenly driving no more than 15mph faster than they're supposed to.

Well, it's a possibility.

But if one deals in probabilities - which are, after all, the nuts and bolts of fleet safety and Duty of Care - the necessity of having a robust and watertight system for checking driving licences will be all the greater if, or rather when, this new regime comes into effect.

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