Is tech the future of roads policing?

WEEK FOUR Final part of our campaign looks at future of roads policing

As budgets are cut, we look at how laws will be enforced

Technology

ONE of the stats we highlighted earlier in our road safety and driving standards campaign was how the number of drinkdrive tests issued by police has fallen in recent years, even though motorists are providing just as many positive samples – meaning more drink-drivers are going untested and unpunished.

One solution is a car that can do some of the police’s work, stopping offenders before they’ve been able to turn a wheel.

The SEAT Leon Cristobal concept takes such an approach. Its engine won’t start until the driver provides an alcohol-free sample of breath and has fastened their seatbelt.

Once it’s moving, fatigue recognition and eye-tracking tech ensures attention never wanders from the road, while parents of teenage drivers can monitor their children’s speed and location via a smartphone app. SEAT claims that if around half of all the cars on the road were fitted with the Cristobal’s systems, accidents would be cut by 40 per cent.

And it’s not just car makers thinking about breathalysers; coach companies and regulators are, too. Back in 2010, National Express announced that it was fitting its fleet with alcohol interlocks.

The European Commission recently got in on the act as well, declaring it wants all new cars to feature pre-wiring for alcohol interlocks from 2021, so the devices can easily be installed in the cars of ‘problem’ drink-drivers.

Other police personnel

BUT the EC’S plans are three years away, the Leon Cristobal is still a concept and the Government has said it will resist mandatory alcohol interlocks due to their cost and unproven effectiveness. So what about the Home Office’s suggestion of using ‘other police personnel’ to catch offenders?

Operation Snap is an example of this. By accepting civilian dash cam footage submitted online, police from all four Welsh forces can prosecute dangerous drivers without deploying traffic officers to offenders’ residences, slashing the time it takes to process driver-generated footage from 15 hours to 15 minutes.

The initiative got off to a strong start; in its first six months there were 100 submissions to North Wales Police alone, and 80 prosecutions issued. The scheme is likely to extend across the rest of the UK after dash cam maker Nextbase announced a nationwide portal that all forces could adopt.

Local communities

ARGUABLY the people best equipped to tell police about problem driving are local residents; who better knows speeding hotspots, or the times of day when dangerous driving is most prevalent?

Councillors in Maldon, Essex, certainly agree with that sentiment. The authority has trained 11 community protection officers to use speed guns at 54 key locations, most identified by residents.

While speeders are the focus of the Trucam project, the cameras can also detect other offences like using a mobile phone at the wheel. Maldon’s community officers have carried out 23 hours of Trucam enforcement since the start of the year, sending footage of 192 speeding drivers to Essex Police, which ultimately decides what action to take.

And while the scheme is in its early stages, Maldon Council leader Mark Durham says it “directly addresses the concerns of local people and helps us tackle speeding and anti-social driving”.