Derry City and Strabane was close to being crowned the crime capital when it comes to motoring wrongdoing in Northern Ireland.
While one in five of the motoring offences recorded by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in 2024 took place in Belfast, law breaking on the road was most plentiful per person elsewhere.
With 298 offences per 10,000 population, Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon topped the driving crime sheet ahead of Derry & Strabane (280) and Belfast City (257).
Only Fermanagh & Omagh (25) pipped Derry & Strabane (24) to the highest level of recorded offences per 10,000 people when it came to drug and drink-driving.
Nationally, it’s young drivers (18-29) whose poor behaviour far outweighs other age groups with it being the second-largest offending group at 37%, despite accounting for just 15% of all legal motorists.
“It’s always troubling to see that the most inexperienced drivers on our roads are being caught breaking the law,” said Peter Cook, a manager at Sterling Insurance.
“They take more risks and often put wear and tear on their often older vehicles by driving erratically.
“It’s this, and the facts we see, that makes this market one of the riskiest to cover and pushes up the prices of premiums.
“This is a huge level of offending but I assure you it would be far worse without black boxes, especially in the younger parts of this age bracket.
“We all want young drivers to be driving safely and this technology allows us to educate customers and monitor their activities behind the wheel.
“It will flag up issues such as speeding but also inform customers about how they’re driving.
“Better actions behind the wheel will make tyres and brakes last longer, which means they’re less likely to fall foul of offences due to construction and use, and be driving around in safer vehicles, at appropriate speeds – which is good news for all concerned.”
The largest issue recorded in the annual report was insurance offences with a total of 5,739 detections.
However, this figure – which saw one sixth of under-18s punished for the crime – was a huge 24% decrease year-on-year.
In 2024, the total number of motoring offences decreased by 16%, down to 34,795 from 41,492 in 2023.
This may be due to a reduction in police budgets and an increase in other bodies, such as the Northern Ireland Road Safety Partnership, catching law breakers.
Their data is not included in the statistics.
Sterling has produced detailed analysis of the data and provided insight on a host of other areas including drink and drug driving offences, speeding and gender-based offending.
You can view the analysis here: https://www.sterling-insurance.co.uk/northern-ireland/blog/convictions/annual-motoring-offence-statistics/
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