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436 – Licence check catches driver with bans of 16 years

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30 April 2010

Business Car Manager: Editor’s Blog

IF EVER your business wondered about the usefulness of driver licence checks, then here is a salutary tale.

Following a driver licence check, a company car driver was identified as being banned for 16 years.

Sixteen years! Astonishing.

The leasing and contract hire company ALD Automotive, which uncovered the driver’s deception, said it was the worst case of disqualification since the company introduced its DriveSafe licence checking service five years ago.

The unnamed driver had received four successive four-year driving bans in the space of 16 weeks from the courts. Two four-year bans for drink-driving were followed by two separate incidents of driving whilst disqualified and a number of other related offences such as supplying false details and driving without insurance.

The courts imposed the bans to run concurrently, which means they expire in November 2013. The employee previously received a 12-month driving ban in 2002.

Driving licence validity checks are recommended by the Health and Safety Executive and the Department for Transport in their joint ‘Driving at Work: Managing Work-related Road Safety‘ document, a best practice guide for businesses to help manage occupational road safety.

It is calculated that there are up to one million drivers on the road without a valid driving licence and the Department for Transport and the DVLA estimates these drivers are nine times more likely to be involved in an accident than a qualified licence holder.

So, if your business doesn’t perform driver licence checks, however small, it might be a wise idea to start – even if it is once a year. It will help you manage your business cars better.

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Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton

Ralph Morton is an award-winning journalist and the founder of Business Car Manager (now renamed Business Motoring). Ralph writes extensively about the car and van leasing industry as well as wider fleet and company car issues. A former editor of What Car?, Ralph is a vastly experienced writer and editor and has been writing about the automotive sector for over 35 years.

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