Splashing pedestrians (FOI ref: 444A/25)

Request

Splashing pedestrians by driving through standing water is illegal under Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act of 1988.

Please can you provide, for the area covered by West Midlands Police, the total number of fixed penalty notices and/or offences recorded in 2024 to motorists for splashing pedestrians?

Response

Our data is not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

The offence you are referring to falls under Careless or Inconsiderate Driving, therefore to try to identify relevant information in relation to ‘splashing pedestrians’ would require us to interrogate and manually review every ticket in relation to Careless or Inconsiderate Driving, this search would exceed the FOI time limit.

Please see: The Road Traffic Act 1988, Section 3 (roadtrafficact1988section3.co.uk)

This means that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12(1) as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.

Unfortunately, due to the reasons outlined above, I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. I am however willing to consider any refinements that you are able to make to your request, in accordance with Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act.