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 »

Knowledge is power, as well as cash in the bank. Research shows that 71% of the population do not know the legal speed limits and are paying for their ignorance.

A Freedom of Information request by insurance firm LV=  found that there was a 6% increase in the number of motorists caught breaking the speed limit last year.

On average drivers break the limit by 8.5mph but there is a small minority (4%) that flout it by up to 20mph. Read Full Article »