ROAD safety campaigners claim lives are being put at risk by cuts in the number of traffic police, with figures showing Scotland's largest force has lost more than 50 officers in four years.
Road safety charity Brake said more resources were needed to combat drink and drug driving, speeding and other offences as enforcement of traffic laws was the most powerful deterrent to illegal motoring.
Figures show Strathclyde Police lost 54 (15%) dedicated traffic officers between 2007 and 2011 – the highest drop across Scotland. However, the force claimed the Brake statistics did not reflect the full resources channelled into the "very high priority" area of policing.
Strathclyde had 290 dedicated officers over its central and eight divisional road policing units in 2011, down from 343 in 2007.
However, a spokeswoman for the force said every officer was involved in meeting "challenging targets" for all motoring offences.
By contrast, Lothian and Borders Police increased its quota of traffic officers by 11 and Grampian boosted its team by 17 over the same period.
Julie Townsend, Brake's deputy chief executive, said: "Road crashes constitute a huge social and economic burden, because of the awful implications for those bereaved and injured, and the strain on health and emergency services. Investing in roads policing, and stepping up critical checks like breath-testing, helps stop crashes before they happen, meaning fewer families suffering and reduced costs to the taxpayer."
Overall, Scotland lost the smallest number of traffic officers in the UK over the period, with a reduction of just 18 officers (-3.6%) across the country. This compares to losses of more than 9% in England, 37% in Wales and 7% in Northern Ireland.
Scotland also recorded the only increase in the number of regular police officers in the UK.
Brake's figures come as significantly fewer motoring offences are recorded north of the Border.
There were 27,530 fewer motoring offences logged in Scotland in 2011 compared to 2007, with 3134 fewer drink-drivers facing prosecution and 23,077 fewer crimes of speeding recorded, according to figures held by the Scottish Government.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article