Penningtons calls for greater penalties as Brake survey reveals that seven out of ten drivers break traffic laws

Posted: 10/10/2013

Nearly seven out of ten drivers admit to breaking road safety laws according to Brake, the road safety charity which has published the results of a road safety survey carried out with Direct Line. The survey of 1,000 drivers found that, while almost all drivers (99%) believe they are comparatively safe, seven out of ten (69%) admit putting others at risk by breaking traffic laws. Of these, approximately half attribute their safety risks to being confident that they can ‘handle it’ while the other half attribute their failings to inattention.

Brake is calling on the Government to ensure greater priority and funding for specialist roads policing – which it says is a proven deterrent to risk-driving – and action to tighten up the penalty points system so that drivers who tot up 12 points or more cannot escape a ban by pleading “exceptional hardship”.

Philippa Luscombe, head of the personal injury team at Penningtons, said: “What is of great concern to us is the high incidence of drivers’ overconfidence and lack of attention revealed by the survey. While these two factors independently cause many accidents, together they are a lethal combination. While some road traffic accidents are truly accidents through no one’s fault, many of the cases we see involving catastrophic injury result from people taking obvious risks such as speeding, driving while under the influence of alcohol, or using a mobile phone.

“The survey findings indicating that people are knowingly taking these risks or simply not thinking are very worrying. We fully support Brake’s campaign and hope that the recent introductions of ‘on the spot’ fines will be policed and enforced to provide real deterrents to this behaviour.”

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