Where do drivers have the most penalty points?

Glasgow tops the list, with 14.5% of drivers living in the postcode area with points. At the other end, Lerwick, in Shetland, has the fewest: just 4% of drivers have had their licences endorsed.

Full data is available to download in the table below. Tables showing the top 10 and bottom 10 locations where drivers have points on their licences can be found on CTC's Road Justice website.

CTC believes that the discrepancy between areas is mainly due to differing levels of traffic policing in different areas. 48% of vehicles disobey the speed limit in free flow conditions, yet only a small fraction of drivers have points on their licence, so it is less likely due to the level of bad driving in any particular area.

CTC’s Policy Co-ordinator Chris Peck said, “It can’t be just down to driver behaviour that 1 in 8 drivers in Glasgow have penalty points, but just 1 in 20 have points in Shetland. The loss of road traffic policing hasn’t been even. Overall there are a third fewer road traffic police today than ten years ago – but the reduction has been greater in some police forces than in others.

Fewer traffic police means day-to-day bad driving goes undetected and dangerous vehicles continue to be used on the roads. In our Road Justice: the role of the police report, CTC has drawn attention to 10 ways in which roads policing needs to be better resourced and police investigation and practices improved.

Chris Peck
CTC Policy Co-ordinator

“Over 8,000 people have signed our roadjustice.org.uk petition calling for stronger enforcement of road traffic law and we’d urge anyone concerned about the lack of enforcement of traffic law in their area to do likewise.”

The Road Justice petition calls on police forces to devote more resources to road traffic policing, and improve the standard of investigation of serious road collisions.

What proportion of drivers have points where you live?

CTC has also produced a map showing the proportion of drivers who hold penalty points down to local postcode level.

Castlemilk, a suburb of Glasgow, has the highest proportion of drivers who hold penalty points: 19.4%, whereas the village of Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight, has the lowest, at just 3.3% of drivers.

Click on different areas of the map to find out more. Areas with no colour markings indicate places with fewer than 500 drivers.