Well first off it seems with decreasing police numbers these powers will rarely be able to be practiced, police generally have better things to do than spend half hour with a tailgater and give him a fine, especially with numbers squeezed.

What i dont agree with is the proposal that the police can apply points to your licence then and there, surely that undermines the justice system and the principle of the police NOT being judge and jury.

Anyway, you'll still be able to appeal that in the courts and i can see a situation where due to technicalities alot of these decisions are repealed. Currently there already are laws against things like dangerous driving, careless driving, driving otherwise in accordance etc etc and most of those laws cover pretty much all of the bases already. Police can already dish out fixed penalty notices for a wide range of driving offences, essentially all this is saying is the range of offences could be wider. There is nothing new or revolutionary in this, most of it is already being done by the Police actually. The offences targeted by this are very low level offences and could often become a matter of opinion, which is why police should not be allowed to dish out points themselves. So the only practical need i can see to the Government is to try and raise some easy money off the motorist, but i dont see how they intend to do that by cutting police numbers, so its an oxymoron and will in the end mean nothing.

The Police wont have enough numbers to impliment these "new" laws to any real degree and even if they did the amount of appeals would then result in the courts not being freed up for other things (freeing up the courts is another segment of this idea).

So overall, no it wont work and no it wont make our roads safer. And whilst we're on Coalition policies, i dont see how in the UK, where the driving standard is frankly terrible, that they can put out a "policy" today which is aimed at saving lives on the roads, and then in the next breath basically say that these awful drivers will be legally allowed to do 80 down the motorway (raising the actual driving speed from 85 to 100).

Edited by jamie745 on 12/05/2011 at 01:04

I can't see it will make much difference, as the event would have to be witnessed to be issued with an instant fine. So unless they are putting 1000's of extra cops on the road how will they see this happening ? So frankly it is another load of time wasting legislation by the governemt, when they should be thinking about how to repair the social and economic fabric of Britain !

Edited by Roly93 on 12/05/2011 at 12:17

I reckon that we just don't have the police-power for it. It also puts the power on the officers to act as police, judge and jury. It takes quite a long time to book a speeder (dad was a traffic cop; I don't speak from experience of being caught!!) and this is another time waster for them. I drive on the M6 daily, and there's only really a police presence at the beginning of each month, as they're on the lookout for expired tax discs.

The coalition Governement is bringing in new laws next year to fine drivers who tailgate cutting up and undertaking and other various bad driving behaviour.

Will this work and will it make our roads safer?

The short answer is no ! For it to work you need TPO`s. they are now becoming a thing of the past due to the cut backs.

I hope they also tackle drivers who park themselves in lane 2 or 3 of multi lane motorways when lane 1 is free - use lane 1 - I hate having to move from lane 1 to lane 3 or 4 to overtake these drivers then move back to lane 1 again

and tackle drivers who 'fail to make due progress' ie drive too slowly for the conditions - it's one cause of dangerous overtaking and it's not fair to only penalise the overtaker of too slow moving vehicles.