Over 8,600 motorists in the UK are still driving despite having 12 points or more

Newly released figures show a huge increase in such drivers escaping a ban

 
According to figures obtained from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) by the insurance company esure, there are more than 8,600 motorists in the UK still driving on the roads despite having 12 points or more on their licence.
The amount of drivers dodging a ban, regardless of having 12 points or more on their licence, has increased by a quarter over the last 18 months.
esure found that 8,600 motorists are still driving around on roads throughout Great Britain, despite having 12 or more penalty points on their driving licence – up from 6,887 in 2015.

 
The law currently in place in the UK requires that any driver who receives 12 points within a three-year period must make an appearance at court, where they will face a minimum driving ban of six months.
However, magistrates are able to show leniency in certain cases, if the ban is deemed as possibly resulting in some form of exceptional hardship, such as the loss of a job.
This form of leniency shown by some magistrates has been pushed to the extreme in some cases, with figures obtained from the DVLA revealing that a driver in Basildon, Essex and another in Liverpool both escaped a ban despite having a staggering 51 points each on their licence.
The large UK town of Croydon, south London, is the place with the most motorists who’ve managed to escape a ban, followed by the capital city of Wales and Leicester.
What’s even more alarming about these newly released figures, is the fact that the number of drivers with 30 points or more on their licence has risen by 50% in just one year.
According to DVLA data obtained by the UK-based insurance company, more than 2.8 million motorists are driving around with at least one penalty point on their licence, with speeding offences to blame as the most common cause.
The two places in the UK with the most drivers having at least one penalty point on their licence are Birmingham and Nottingham.
esure also discovered that over 1.5 million people in the UK owned up to the fact they’ve taken points for someone else, whilst 360,000 said that they’d forgotten who was driving when the offence took place.
Chief Underwriting Officer at esure Jon Wilshire, said that initially when a driver reached 12 points on their licence, a driving ban would more often than not follow, which helped to deter motorists from repeatedly flouting the law.
“While there will be cases where a ban could cause exceptional hardship, it’s astonishing that some drivers could get so many points and still not be disqualified. There need to be clear consequences,” added Mr Wilshire.
 
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