Britain's Worst Drivers: Where Are They?

Driving Points Statistics for England and Wales

The average British motorist has 0.258 points on their licence, according to NimbleFins' analysis of driver licence data from the DVLA. That's equivalent to 257.7 points per 1,000 drivers.

Over 2.4 million motorists currently have points on their licence. The summation of these points as of July 2021 is over 9.5 million points. If you consider that many common driving offences such as speeding, failing to obey traffic signals and driving whilst using a mobile phone are worth 3 to 6 points, that's a lot of potentially dangerous driving.

There's one 42-year-old female motorist in the BN2 postcode district (Brighton) with a whopping 68 points as of July 2021! Two people (a 32-year-old female and a 28-year-old male) have 60 points. There are 63 motorists with 30 or more points on their licence; and 293 motorists have 20 or more points.

But which postcodes overall have the drivers with the least and most points? We dug into the data to find out. Here's what we found.

Areas where motorists have the most points

Bradford arguably has the highest-offending drivers with the most points. The BD3 postcode disctrict (Barkerend, Bradford Moor, Thornbury, Eastbrook, Pollard Park, parts of, Laisterdyke, Undercliffe, and Wapping) is the worst in England and Wales, with a shocking 643.4 points per 1,000 licenced motorists. That's 2.5X the average of 257.5 points per 1,000 licenced motorists in all of England and Wales.

In fact, 9 of the worst 25 postcode districts are in Bradford. Another 8 of the worst 25 are in Liverpool, with 4 in Leeds, making these three post towns the worst-offending areas.

What does it mean for an area to have drivers that have accumulated a lot of points? Well, it means that drivers in these areas have been caught breaking the law, for instance by speeding or driving while texting. It could be that these areas have the worst drivers. Or it could be that motorists in these areas are more prone to getting caught—for instance, in areas with a higher prevalence of speed cameras.

Either way, below we've listed the 25 postcode districts in England and Wales that have the highest number of points per person.

You can be disqualified from driving if you accumulate 12 or more penalty points over 3 years (or fewer points, in some cases), so how can some drivers accumulate so many points? It can be a simple timing issue—if a motorist is caught speeding many times in a short period of time, the points could rack up before the motorist has been notified or the DVLA has been able to process the offences. In that case, for example, a driver could accumulate many points before they are disqualified from driving.

Also, points can stay on the record for 4 or 11 years so over time points can build up, leading some motorists to have higher numbers of points. More serious offences like 'Driving or attempting to drive with alcohol level above limit' stay on the record longer (11 years).

Areas where motorists have the least points

The Isle of Wight is the clear winner when it comes to motorists with the fewest points on their licences. In fact, the best 8 of the top 25 postcodes for this metric hail from the Isle of Wight. This is even more impressive considering there are only 12 postcode districts (PO) on the Isle of Wight in total.

The PO38 postcode district in Ventnor ranked #1 with just 81.1 points per 1,000 motorist—68% less than the England and Wales average of 257.5 points per 1,000 motorists.

Other standout areas are Canterbury, which contributed 4 of the top 25 postcode districts (CT10, CT13, CT14 and CT15), and South West London, which has 3 postcodes in this top tier (SW20, SW12 and SW19).

The rate of average points per motorist is a remarkable 7.9X higher in the worst postcode district (BD3) compared to the best (PO38). With the impressive stats from the Isle of Wight, this may be more reason to head there for your next staycation!

Methodology

To arrive at the results of this study, we analysed DVLA driver licence data from Table DRL0132 (Penalty Points by postcode district, Great Britain) and Table DRL0102 (Provisional and Full driving licences by postcode district and gender, Great Britain) as of July 2021. To compare different sized post towns, we standardised by dividing the total number of current points by the number of licenced motorists of each postcode district. We only considered postcode districts with at least 3,000 motorists since areas with smaller populations are more sensitive to data fluctuations. As a result, 58 postcode districts were eliminated from consideration, leaving 2,066 postcode districts in the study.

• DVLA driver licence data

Data for All Postcode Districts

Look up your local area to see how the stats compare. Postcode districts are listed alphabetically.