Young drivers committed over 81,500 offences in the last year

Speeding topped the list of young driver offences.

By: Dominik Wilde

Oct 29, 2020 at 5:20am ET

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New research from Moneyshake, an online service that helps people find car lease deals, has revealed that 81,509 motoring offences were committed by drivers aged 16-25 in the last year, with speeding being the most common.

Three quarters of young driver offences were speeding offences, while 4,371 drivers aged 16-25 committed multiple, separate motoring offences in the same year year.

Speeding on what Moneyshake calls a 'public road' was number one of the top-10 list of young driver motoring offences, with speeding on a motorway second – with almost a fifth of the number of offences (11,363 to 47,863). Speeding in a goods vehicle also featured, down in eighth. Speeding was the top repeated offence as well.

The top non-speeding related offence was driving without insurance, with almost half the number of offences as speeding on a motorway, failing to identify a driver and failing to comply with traffic signals completing the top five.

As many as eight in 10 motoring offences committed by young drivers are serious enough to risk a ban for those that have not long since passed their test – the penalty for such offences goes up to six points, and if that amount is accumulated, it will result in a ban within two years of passing.

And statistics from the Department for Transport show that you’re more likely to pass your test at a young age, making 16-25 year olds at most risk of losing their licence early on because of a motoring offence.

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DVLA statistics show that drivers have been caught four times in the same year for things like driving with defective tyres, drug driving, and reckless or dangerous driving. The three can result in a maximum of 12, 44, and 44 points respectively, with driving with defective tyres also eligible for a £10,000 fine while the others could result in an unlimited fine.

Perhaps surprisingly, as young drivers got older, they were more likely to commit a motoring offence, with 25-year-olds committing the highest number of offences – 14,398.