Safer Roads Policing

Within North Yorkshire and the City of York there are over 6,000 miles of roads, used every day by a variety of people for many reasons - from commuting and tourism to committing crime.

The substantial size of the force area means that we must consider our road networks as a geographical neighbourhood in themselves, with their own set of people, priorities, issues and crimes. Some road users may be only travelling through our county, but their activities can have a serious impact at the heart of our communities.

We will continue to patrol the roads of North Yorkshire and the City of York to help to create a safer environment and reduce the numbers of deaths and serious injuries which cause such devastation to individuals and families.

To assist us in achieving our goals we will work in partnership with other organisations and use modern technology to develop a multi-disciplined, problem solving approach to casualty and crime reduction.

Reducing offences

We will disrupt criminals who use our roads; we will seek to prevent and prosecute the anti-social use of our roads, which endangers vulnerable road users such as young people and motorcyclists; and we will build on the successes of previous operations to continue our campaigns against drink-driving and other offences such as the use of mobile phones whilst driving.

Crossing boundaries

As well as working with our partners and building on our successful initiatives as described to create Safer Roads, we will work with other police forces in our region. We share the same issues with our roads and the same need to make them safer, so we will be working together to address these problems and disrupt those criminals who use our roads to travel between forces to commit crimes.

The four Police Forces of Yorkshire (North, South and West) and Humberside are working together to ensure that the people who live in, work in, and visit our local communities are safe. Using our resources together will enable us and our partners to tackle more serious crime, make our roads safer, and deal with serious incidents wherever and whenever they occur.

The four Chief Constables and Police Authorities commissioned projects to review specific areas of policing during 2007, in particular Roads Policing. This project has recommended the establishment of a regional intelligence unit to collate and analyse roads policing information from, and affecting, all four forces. This unit will provide information to a new Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) unit, which will increase the ability for the four Forces to identify when and where criminals are using our roads and respond accordingly. Both the Intelligence and ANPR units will have a centralised command to ensure that activity is co-ordinated across the region.

Our Safer Roads focus will ensure that:

  • there will be fewer deaths and serious injuries on our roads,
  • criminals will be deterred from using our roads in order to commit crime,
  • more anti-social road users will be prosecuted,
  • we will meet the increasing demands for regional road policing services in addition to ensuring our local communities are safe.