National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme is popular

27 July 2011

A new  report available on the Road Safety Knowledge Centre into ACPO's position concerning the use of the offender driver retraining scheme, for minor road offences, which is preferred over criminal prosecution.

 RoadSafe has always favoured education over punishment for suitable offences, with the need for a mixture of statutory and non statutory retraining schemes.

The Police have been operating the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme 1991. This was developed from the recommendations in the Road Traffic Law Review of 1988. They are run entirely by the Police to a corporate arrangement and the course provision is usually procured from a mixture of private and public sector contractors from the road safety/driver training professions.

Evidence would support  they are very popular with the public. The offenders pay for the cost of the course in lieu of the penalty that is in place for the offence and an incentive is that no penalty is recorded against them on completing the course. It is enforced by a sanction of reverting to the original offence process in default of an offender not completing the course.

The full report is available here.