Does the Threat of Disqualification Deter Drivers from Speeding

It has long been recognised that driving speeds that are excessive and inappropriate
to the conditions are a major contributory factor in road accidents, and a major issue for road safety. Restraining driving speeds has proved to be a difficult task, given the improvements over the years in both vehicle performance and road design.

Within the traditional ‘three Es’ countermeasures of engineering, education and
enforcement, recent years have seen the introduction of a wide range of engineering
measures designed to bring about speed reduction, but these tend to be restricted to
specific parts of the road network.

New technologies such as Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) offer considerable promise, but mainly in the medium or longer term. Similarly, educative efforts to induce attitude and behaviour change in this context are bearing fruit, yet this is a long-term rather than short-term project.

For the foreseeable future, enforcement will remain the principal means of influencing speed, by setting speed limits and imposing sanctions on drivers who are caught exceeding them.

The number of licence endorsements has increased enormously in recent years. However, over the same period the number of disqualifications resulting from ‘totting-up’ points has decreased. This would seem to indicate that many drivers who accumulate up to 11 penalty points are either acting as if deterred by the threat of disqualification, or are avoiding disqualification in some other way.

The extent to which penalty points act as a deterrent for the benefit of road safety in general is therefore an important issue, and this report describes work that has been carried out to study this issue by TRL and Brunel University, under contract to the Department for Transport.

The aim and objectives of the project were as follows:

Aim:
• To inform understanding of the deterrent effect of speed cameras and the
motivations underpinning the behaviour of repeat speed offenders.

Objectives:
• An analysis of the subset of the DVLA database, as provided, to inform
understanding of the relationship between speeding convictions and re-offending.
• To develop profiles of the group or groups most likely to be speed offenders,
particularly repeat offenders.