Half of drivers admit breaking traffic laws

Huddersfield-based charity Brake is calling on the incoming Government to make traffic policing and casualty reduction a priority, after its poll showed as many as 49 per cent of drivers said they flouted road regulations.

Of those breaking the rules, half said they did so deliberately because they thought they could get away with it or did not agree with the laws.

Brake said this makes it clear that more needs to be done both to enforce traffic laws, and to persuade drivers to buy in to the importance of complying with them.

Deputy chief executive Julie Townsend said: “As these figures make clear, law breaking on our roads is not just down to a minority but endemic.

“For whatever reason, many seem to feel they are beyond the law or that traffic laws are somehow optional.

“This represents a failure by government to ensure traffic policing is receiving adequate priority and to make clear the importance and legitimacy of traffic laws.”

Men were twice as likely as women to flout the laws because they thought they could get away with it.

The poll also revealed that drivers are more confident in the safety of their own driving than they were 10 years ago, with 69 per cent rating themselves as safer than most other drivers, up from 50 per cent in 2005.

Drivers also judge others more harshly than themselves, with 58 per cent saying there are more dangerous drivers than safe drivers on UK roads.

Young drivers, those aged from 17-24, are most likely to rate their driving as safer than others, with 58 per cent saying they are “much” safer.

When drivers were asked what unsafe behaviour they had witnessed most in the last year, distraction, such as from mobile phones, was the biggest concern, followed by tailgating, speeding and risky overtaking.

Brake said the country’s roads are becoming “increasingly lawless territory” with Government figures showing the number of traffic police in England and Wales had fallen by 23 per cent in the past four years

The most recent road casualty figures showed that deaths and serious injuries increased by 4 per cent in the year ending September 2014, with deaths up by 1 per cent. Child casualties also saw their first rolling year increase in 20 years.

Ms Townsend added: “Whoever takes power after 7 May needs to make traffic policing a national policing priority, to ensure there is a strong deterrent against risky law-breaking on roads. We also need to see road safety given greater political priority, to set casualties falling once more and deliver safer streets for communities everywhere.

“That means reintroducing road casualty reduction targets, and working harder to win the ideological battle, to ensure everyone who gets behind the wheel understands why the rules exist.”

Hundreds of on-the-spot fines were handed out to the region’s motorists for offences such as lane-hogging, tailgating and dangerous overtaking on the region’s roads in the first year of police having new powers, The Yorkshire Post revealed last summer.