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Speeding (236A/21)

Request

Part 1

  • The number of speeding offences on roads within the West Midlands Police area for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. The statistics should be broken down into year.
  • Please breakdown each year’s statistics into level of speeding offences ie High speed,

Part 2

  • The number of fatal road traffic collisions in the West Midlands Police area broken down in to annual data for 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020

Part 3

  • The number of speeding offences on the M6 Toll in the West Midlands Police area broken down in to annual data for 2018, 2019 and 2020
  • The number of speeding offences on the M6 in the West Midlands Police area broken down in to annual data for 2018, 2019 and 2020

Part 4

  • The total number of accidents on SMART motorways in the West Midlands Police area broken down in to annual data for 2018, 2019 and 2020. Please include details of the number of SMART motorways within the area
  • Please break down the number of accidents on SMART motorways in each year in to categories ie fatal collisions, collisions with multiple injuries, collision with no injuries sustained.
  • The total number of speeding offences on SMART motorways in the West Midlands Police area broken down in to annual date for 2018, 2019 and 2020.
  • Total number of accidents on stretches of road which are currently SMART motorways in 2004 and 2005
  • Please break down the number of accidents on these roads in 2004 and 2005 in to categories ie fatal collisions, collisions with multiple injuries, collision with no injuries sustained.

Part 5

  • The number of offences involving a mobile phone use while driving for the West Midlands Police area for 2018, 2019 and 2020 broken down into yearly figures
  • A break down of the type of offence ie texting, phone call, filming etc

Clarification received 19/02/2021:

In terms of speeding offences, they are broken down into categories, the Sentencing Guidelines table and categories can be found here: https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-court/item/speeding-revised-2017/

‘Level of speeding offences’ means, the category the speeding offence fits into i.e. low, middle or high category.

In terms of ‘high speed’ it refers to the top bracket on the sentencing guidelines therefor:

41 mph or above in a 20mph

51 mph or above in a 30mph

66 mph or above in a 40mph

76 mph or above in a 50mph

91mph or above in a 60mph

101mph or above in a 70mph

Response

Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of the requested information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

With regard to Part 5 (question 2), using a mobile phone to film whilst driving does not fall under the mobile phone offence; this would either be driver not in a position to be in proper control or driving without due care. Therefore, to try to answer this question we would need to manually review all tickets and collision reports for these offences across a 3 year period. Such a search, however, would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).

This means that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request.

However, in accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request. With regard to Part 4, I have been advised that Highways England hold data specific to Smart Motorways, therefore you may wish to separately approach them in order to obtain this data.

With regard to the remainder of your request, I can provide relevant information as this was retrieved during our initial research. Please see attached documents.

This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.

Attachments

236A_Attachment_01

236A_Attachment_02

236A_Attachment_03