Child death toll rises despite police chiefs’ crackdown on drivers
The number of children killed or seriously injured on Scotland’s roads has soared by more than 16 per cent in a year despite a growing ‘war on drivers’.
Police Scotland has been accused of an over-zealous approach to road policing after an official watchdog exposed a speeding f i nes target culture.
But despite this, new Police Scotland f i gures show t he number of road deaths has increased by around 9 per cent in a year.
There has been a 16.1 per cent rise in the number of under-16s ‘killed or seriously injured’ on the roads.
It comes amid controversy over the SNP’s draconian new drinkdriving l i mit, i ntroduced in December last year, aimed at improving road safety.
The figures appear in papers submitted by the force to the Scottish Police Authority, which is due to meet in Glasgow today.
They show that the number of people of all ages seriously injured on the roads in the period April to December 2014 was 1,411, down from 1,461 in the same period in 2013. however, there was an increase in all fatalities over the same period from 145 to 158, representing a 9 per cent increase.
The number of children ‘killed or seriously injured’ rose from 112 to 130, while (within that f i gure) child road f atalities decreased from seven to six.
chief constable Sir Stephen house has said officers are focusing on improving road safety, adding: ‘If that means stopping tens of thousands of motorists each year and either warning them or prosecuting them, that’s what we will have to do.’
Sir Stephen said police preferred to refer to a traffic ‘collision’ rather than an ‘accident’, as the term ‘accident’ implied it could not be helped. he insisted: ‘A high proportion of the fatalities and serious injuries are down to driver behaviour.’
chief Superintendent Iain Murray, head of road policing, said: ‘enforcement will always remain the primary means by which we seek to change behaviour.
‘however, when it comes to risk-taking, there is no such thing as a low-level motoring offence, and the consequences of speeding, drink/drug-driving, not wearing a seatbelt or using your mobile phone while driving can be catastrophic.’
But solicitor advocate richard freeman, a road traffic specialist, has criticised police for pursuing motorists as ‘easy targets’.
he said officers were ‘investing a disproportionate and unnecess ary amount of t i me and resources in dealing with minor motoring offences which could be better placed dealing with more serious crime’.
Nearly one in four motorists north of the Border has been hit with a speeding fine, together totalling more than £50million.
her Majesty’s Inspectorate of constabulary i n Scotland (hMIcS) has called for a new approach by Police Scotland, saying it should switch the focus back to officer ‘discretion’.
It follows an admission by some senior officers that fining speeding motorists in Scotland was like ‘shooting fish in a barrel’. An hMIcS report l ast year revealed the existence of road policing targets, something which has been fiercely denied by police chiefs. It found that target for ‘detecting’ speeding offences had been hugely exceeded. The initial aim was for a 10 per cent annual rise, but in reality it rose by about 37 per cent.
The report added that senior officers, including Sir Stephen, had the chance to rein in the crackdown but took an ‘ executive’ decision to proceed – a move aimed at ‘better influencing driver behaviour’.
Meanwhile the new Police Scotland figures also show that during the festive drink-drive campaign, after the change in alcohol limits on December 5 last year, Police Scotland tested 17,504 drivers for alcohol – an average of 625 drivers each day.
A total of 351 drink- drivers were caught during the 28-day period compared with 434 in the same period the previous year – a 19 per cent reduction.
Scotland’s new drink- drive laws reduced the legal alcohol limit from 80mg to 50mg per 100ml of blood, which police say makes it inadvisable not to drink at all before driving.
‘Motorists are easy targets’