IAM Fleet has voiced concerns about plans to allow police to issue on-the-spot fines for careless driving, which it says would affect high mileage drivers.

It claims introducing a simpler procedure may persuade officers to deal with more serious cases by Fixed Penalty Notices (FPN), rather than the more appropriate - but more time consuming - prosecution and court appearance.

“Offences range from very bad driving, which could have been charged as dangerous but wasn’t, to minor parking knocks,” explained Seb Goldin, managing director of IAM Fleet.

“It is generally dependent on the surrounding facts, witness testimony and the courts’ interpretation of the offences. As such, IAM Fleet believes that careless driving should not be included in the list of fixed penalty notices.”

IAM Fleet believes that rather than devising methods of making careless driving prosecutions simpler and more attractive to police officers, the Department for Transport should campaign pro-actively to improve driver behaviour generally.