The closure of Truckpol, the UK’s only freight crime intelligence unit, in March was a bitter blow to the haulage industry.

Its future had been uncertain for some time and then when it lost the Home Office grant in the last round of government cutbacks the writing was on the wall.

So maybe it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to learn that Truckpol’s parent, the Association of Chief Police Officer’s unit dedicated to combating organised vehicle crime, AVCIS, is also now under threat. Read Full Article »

The government continues to push ahead with the introduction of a specific drug driving offence and it says ‘drugalysers’ should receive type approval by the Home Office by the end of the year.

The Department for Transport says the penalty for the new offence will be a maximum of six months in prison and/or a fine of up to £5,000, and an automatic driving ban of at least 12 months.

Currently, police have to demonstrate that driving had been impaired by drugs in order to prosecute, but the proposed legislation will automatically make it an offence to drive a vehicle if you have certain controlled drugs in your body in excess of specified amounts. Read Full Article »

Whiplash claims are, as the Association of British Insurers (ABI) is keen to point out, a pain in the neck.

As someone who was once on the other end of a spurious claim for neck injuries, it’s easy to see why.

Whiplash is tough to disprove, very tough. In fact, it’s so difficult that according to the ABI it is all thanks to this complaint that the cost of all our insurance policies have risen by 20%.

Claims have increased by a third in the last three years, despite a fall in the number of collisions. Read Full Article »

When Southend Borough Council heralded the arrival of two CCTV-equipped enforcement cars in the town last summer councillor Tony Cox made clear what they were not for:

“This isn’t about generating revenue for the council’s coffers.”

Following a landmark Traffic Penalty Tribunal case last week Councillor Cox can rest easy in the fact that this comment still holds true, although the ‘spy cars’ might actually end up losing the council money. Read Full Article »

The last couple of months has seen a lot of research published about how we are all too busy doing stuff to bother looking out of the windscreen while driving.

Richard Madeley, standing in for Chris Evans on Radio 2, strived to sound even more sceptical than he usually does when faced with a fact with which he is unfamiliar, after a co-presenter highlighted a study that shows texting slows down reaction times almost two and a half times more than alcohol.

A few weeks later the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) produced another release, this time revealing what users of Twitter like to tweet while they’re driving. Read Full Article »

The DVLA attracts cock-ups like Britain’s Got Talent does misguided fame seekers.

Following the announcement in December that thousands of driving licences have been returned to convicted drink drivers before they had undergone medical checks, comes the announcement that 175,000 digital tachograph cards are thought to be faulty.

The problem emerged late last month when HGV drivers and their bosses reported an assortment of error messages displayed on their tacho units.
Some simply manifested themselves as: “Error 48”, some could no longer be inserted into the tachograph and some even ejected themselves from drivers’ units while the vehicle was in motion. Read Full Article »