No insurance / driving (FOI ref: 1507A/24)

I'd like to make a request regarding information on uninsured drivers in your area

Specifically, I'd like to request information on the following:

1. How many drivers were caught to be driving without an insured vehicle in your district from 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023?

2. How many drivers were caught to be driving without an insured vehicle in your district from 1st January 2024 to 31st August 2024?

3. The number of road accidents/collisions caused by uninsured drivers in your district from 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023?

4. The number of road accidents/collisions caused by uninsured drivers in your district from 1st January 2024 to 31st August 2024

On the 26^th September 2024 we sent a cost offer, you responded the same day with the following amended questions.

1. How many drivers were caught to be driving without an insured vehicle in your district from 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023?

2. How many drivers were caught to be driving without an insured vehicle in your district from 1st January 2024 to 31st August 2024?

Response

Please find enclosed our response.

For questions 1 and 2 the figure will not include any matter where more than one offence was committed at the same time.  These matters are passed directly to court to be dealt with (for example, if a driver is caught with no insurance and no licence).

The number of vehicles seized for no insurance is higher than these figures.  The reason for this is where a vehicle has been stopped and no insurance is one of multiple offences, the driver would be reported to Court for the multiple offences and the vehicle seized.

The Court figures are not held in a retrievable format because it would mean an individual search of all reports to court to see if one of the offences was driving with no insurance. The system for those reports going to court is searchable by name of defendant and not the offences committed.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that this data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request may be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are considered when interpreting the data. 

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of data which has relevance to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.  

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.