Disqualified young drivers ‘vanish’

A law that was intended to improve road safety by targeting reckless young drivers has had the opposite effect, according to a report last week in The Times.

More than 40,000 young drivers who have been disqualified under the New Drivers Act could be continuing to drive while unlicensed and uninsured, according to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS).

The Act stipulates that drivers who receive six penalty points within two years of passing their tests must have their licence revoked, and will have to start the qualification process from the beginning.

The law was introduced to try to reduce the number of serious crashes caused by inexperienced drivers, especially those under the age of 20.

PACTS found that fewer than half of the novice drivers who lost their licences under the Act requalified and returned to the roads as legal drivers. Of the 62,000 young drivers disqualified between January 1998 and March 2003, only 29,000 regained their licence, leaving 33,000 who disappeared from the system.

Rob Gifford, the director of PACTS, said that some would have decided to give up driving, but at least two thirds were likely to be driving illegally. “There is strong evidence that many thousands of novice drivers disqualified through the New Drivers Act are continuing to drive unlicensed, and we know that unlicensed drivers pose a far greater threat on the roads.”

Stephen Ladyman, the road safety minister, admitted that the New Drivers Act was not working.If these people are not returning to take the test, I think it would be a difficult stretch of the imagination to assume that they have stopped driving,” he said.

For the full story go to: http://business.timesonline.co.uk