Amid rise of dangerous lawlessness on our roads, where are Scotland's traffic police?

Dangerous driving in search of social media hits and the scourge of illegally supercharged ebikes shows the folly of over-reliance on technology to police the roads.

This is the subject of my latest column, published in today's Scotsman (1st September 2026).

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but lately I have been struck by how few marked police traffic cars I have seen on the trunk roads of Scotland, especially at night. 

Not so long ago you would frequently see the familiar ‘Battenberg’ marked cars, Traffic Cars, either patrolling just on the speed limit, as if daring you to overtake, or parked up at some busy intersection - as a hi viz deterrent. 

Now it seems, like most other components of our criminal justice system, specialist Roads Policing has fallen victim to financial cuts. No apologies for banging on about budget cuts, but when you read that The Metropolitan Police are planning to disband their entire road policing division, the famous ‘Black Rats’, you know it’s serious. 

To be sure Roads Policing is expensive, the equipment has to be the best and the training of ‘Traffic ‘drivers is intensive with a high dropout rate.  The officers you see driving the big patrol cars are amongst the best trained drivers in the country. To pass out as a class 1 advanced police driver or motor cyclist you must not only pass a theoretical exam with a very high mark, but undertake a series of practical high speed road tests where driving skills are tested to the limit. Road craft, observations, & vehicle handling must all be mastered to an incredibly high standard. 

But of course, it’s all very expensive, and there is a school of thought that new technology, speed cameras and the likes, can regulate the roads more cheaply.  I don’t believe this to be true, for as recent tragedies show, the need for effective prevention and detection of our traffic laws remains high. Mainly due to better vehicle design and improvements in accident emergency medicine, our fatal road accidents have fallen over the years, but as the recent multi fatal crash on the A66 shows, the extreme dangers on our roads persist. 

It seems we now have a new generation of ‘Joy Riders’, young men with fast cars but no driving skill or judgment, and motivated by social media hits to carry out the most dangerous of high-speed stunts. More commonly in many of our suburban areas, groups of masked youths on souped up electric bikes are causing mayhem.

Police now routinely confiscate and destroy illegal bikes, but stopping them on the street, safely and without endangering the riders or the public, is a highly specialised and risky business requiring great skill. 

Forty years ago, ‘Joy Riders’ were a menace on our roads and like many crime types, we have now come full circle - our roads and pavements have once again become crime scenes. 

If we are to prevent the kind of disaster we saw on the A66 we must have the expertise deployed to do it. 

The principles of Road Safety are built on three pillar’s, Education, Engineering, and Enforcement.  To address this reemerging threat of dangerous lawlessness on our roads and pavements we must have the tools and expertise out there for everyone to see.