The High Risk Offender Scheme for drink-drivers

The High Risk Offencer (HRO) Scheme covers those drink-drive offenders who are felt to pose a particularly high risk to other road users or themselves because of the severity of the offence committed. The consequence of being an HRO is that the driving licence is not reissued automatically at the end of the disqualification period, as occurs with most other types of offender. Instead, an HRO must apply for a new licence, and one will only be issued following a positive medical assessment. This report presents analyses of an extract of the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) driver licence file. It explores the number of drivers who have become HROs, their length of disqualification and the proportion whose driving licences are reissued at the end of the period of disqualification. These analyses give an overview of the data but do not throw light on the effects on the people involved, so the report also describes the results of questionnaire surveys. Two surveys examined the experiences that HROs have of the scheme and their attitudes to drinking and driving; a third investigated knowledge of the HRO scheme amongst a representative sample of the driving population. (A)