Driving Offence stats (500A/20 & 503A/20 aggregated)
Request
Could you please disclose the number of people who were charged with the following offence: Dangerous Driving, Careless and inconsiderate driving and Driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs in Coventry and Birmingham between 1 July 2019 – 30 June 2020?
Could you please disclose the given number of people who were charged with driving offences involving serious injury and/or death in Coventry and Birmingham in the timeframe of 1 July 2019 – 30 June 2020?
Could you please disclose how many people were charged with driving offences involving drinks and/or drugs, and failing to give a specimen in Coventry and Birmingham between 1 July 2019, and 30 June, 2020?
Could you please disclose line by line how many people were fined due to or charged with speeding offences and what speed they were driving at when they got caught in Coventry and Birmingham between 1 July 2019, and 30 June, 2020?
Could you please disclose how many people were fined due to or charged with “driving using a mobile phone” in Coventry and Birmingham between 1 July 2019, and 30 June, 2020?
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
We are able to provide the majority of the data however, to retrieve the locations of the speeding fines would exceed the costs as we do not have the facility to search for the information and every record would need to be individually assessed.
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached file “attachment 503A_20). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.