303 vehicles seized in July on Devon and Cornwall’s roads

Drive Cornwall’s roads and you share them with a team that keeps a running tally of everything it does. In July that tally got long. The Devon and Cornwall Police Road Safety Team has pulled a full month of work onto a single page, and the figures cover the whole force area, Cornwall and Devon together, rather than Cornwall on its own.

It is a snapshot of a month of road policing across the two counties, running from speed checks and seizures to courses and medical referrals. Here is what the numbers say.

Cars taken off the road

The figure the team put front and centre is 303. That is how many uninsured or unlicensed vehicles were seized in July. Each one is a car, van or bike that was being driven without the cover or the paperwork the law requires, and each one was taken off the road there and then.

Speed is still the headline

Most of the month’s effort went where most serious crashes begin. The team logged 578 speed detection hours, time spent watching the numbers at the roadside. Alongside that came 302 CSW sessions, and 439 officer-issued tickets were received across the month.

The message underneath all of it is the one the team keeps repeating. Slow down.

Phones and seatbelts

Two of the most basic rules on the road still caught plenty of people out. The infographic groups seatbelt and mobile phone offences together, showing 735 alongside the seatbelt icon and another 268 alongside the mobile phone.

The public doing its bit

A growing share of the work now starts with a member of the public and a camera. The team logged 778 Op Snap submissions in July, the reports it receives from people who caught something on the road worth passing on.

Sending drivers back to school

Not everything the team did in July ended in a ticket. The single biggest number on the page is 12,269, the count of NDORS educational courses delivered over the month. A further 25 people took a Bike Safe course.

Fit to be driving

There were also 185 medical referrals to the DVLA.

The team says the reason for putting a whole month onto one page is a simple one, to get people to slow down and make safer choices on the road, and to show how hard it is working to get them there. Next month the same page comes back with a fresh set of numbers, and the count starts again from zero.

📷Credit: Devon & Cornwall Police Road Safety Team