The Relationship Between Police Numbers & Driving Offences
There is growing statistical evidence to the long held belief that driving offences grow in number where there is a less visible police presence.
Much of our day to day road traffic policing is being passed across to cameras rather than police officers. In the same way that motorists speed past ‘Traffic Officers’ on motorways, cameras only function to capture excess speed offences, so, as long as you are within the speed limit for the road in question, you could not wear a seatbelt, be drunk or stoned, be eating, wet shaving, applying makeup and all while talking or even worse, texting or emailing on your phone and no a damn thing would be done about it.
This situation is all well and good for ‘saving money’ or ‘raising money’ depending on your viewpoint, but it does nothing to address the fundamental issues of road safety for which the government is responsible.
Speeding was number one in the driving offences list, so addressing it made sense, but it appears, some years later that this happened at the expense of real policing which has suffered successive budget cuts and cost savings, resulting in not enough police for too many roads.
With so many other motoring offences now occurring in larger numbers and with far fewer police on our roads to police them effectively, there is a rise in accidents being caused by non speeding offences.
In some areas of the country, police forces are throwing additional manpower at intensive awareness activities, better known as blanket policing of motorists for non speed related offences.
Because of this, the UK’s largest specialist motor law solicitors Patterson Law are seeing a rise in calls from motorists needing help defending their offences.