West Yorkshire motorists revealed to be among most careless in country

9/7/03 Queueing traffic on the M1 motorway leaving Leeds in the rush hour last night (wed)

A total of 804 drivers in the region have been convicted of careless driving offences since police were given powers to issue spot fines two years ago.

New figures, released by road safety charity the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM), rank West Yorkshire 8th out of 33 forces across England and Wales.

From August 2013, police were given new powers to issue fixed penalty notice to drivers who put other motorists’ lives at risks for offences including tailgating and poor lane discipline.

Sarah Sillars, IAM chief executive officer, said: “While these offences fall under the lower end of the scale for motoring transgressions, such driving behaviour could easily have caused a serious accident.

“Tailgating is an aggressive action designed to intimidate another driver, while unpredictable lane-changing is both thoughtless and dangerous.

The IAM submitted Freedom of Information requests to 43 police forces, of which 33 responded.

In West Yorkshire, 470 motorists have been convicted of driving without due care and attention and 334 for driving in a public place without reasonable consideration to others, since 2013.

In total, 17,468 people were convicted of the offence in England Wales during the two-year period.

Mrs Sillars added: “We hope these on-the-spot fines and remedial courses have helped concentrate the drivers’ minds and make them think twice about these potentially hazardous manoeuvres in the future.”

The worst force area for the offence, according to the figures, was Essex where 3,630 people were convicted.

Other motoring mishaps which the careless driving offence can cover include driving on the wrong side, or the wrong way, on the road, bad driving at a roundabout and intimidating or obstructing cyclists.

Humberside ranked second with 1,998 motorists convicted of careless driving and Nottinghamshire was third with 1,139.

In North Yorkshire, only 145 drivers were convicted of the offence, one of the lowest out of the 33 forces which responded in England and Wales.