Almost 20 banned drivers caught behind the wheel every day
London has the highest number of offenders
LAST year, 6,177 disqualified drivers were caught behind the wheel by UK police forces, according to new figures.
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The number equates to 17 drivers every day, with London being the area with the highest number of offenders.
Although the total number of banned motorists caught driving has been falling in recent years, some areas of the UK experienced a rise last year. They included Bedfordshire, where 84 disqualified drivers were caught at the wheel in 2014, up from 64 the previous year.
The region where the most number of disqualified drivers were caught was London. Here, 1,429 motorists who had been banned from driving were caught by police behind the wheel. Other regions with high numbers of disqualified drivers included Manchester (472), Northumbria (388) and Leicestershire (291).
Since 2004, more than 125,000 banned drivers have been caught driving illegally by police forces across the UK.
Richard Browning, a director of Nextbase, a company that provides in-car cameras and which obtained the figures under the Freedom of Information Act, said: “The high numbers of disqualified drivers found in today’s data should make any motorist stop and think about how best to protect themselves in a situation where they may be involved in a traffic incident involving a disqualified, and therefore unauthorised, motorist.”
