Now if police are concerned about motorists with bad eyesight they can order an on the spot sight test for the driver.

This test, much like in your original driving test, is to read a car registration plate thats 20 meters away. If this test isn’t completed to the officers satisfaction then they can send the report to the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) which until quite recently took days and even weeks to process and complete. However what they’ve done now in the hope of making the roads safer for all drivers is they can now send the report by email which will only take hours in oppose to what it used to take. This makes it much easier to get motorists with bad eyesight who are a risk to others off the road much quicker.

Motorists used to be able to continue driving through the hours or weeks that the report would take to process, this was a massive danger and the inevitable happened when Jackie McCord’s 16 year old daughter was struck down by a driver who had failed a recent roadside eyesight test and subsequently she was killed. This driver was wrongfully yet legally allowed to drive on the road making it unable to point the blame. Jackie McCord the mother of the girl had numerous campaigns and petitions to see that someone amended this danger hazard, eventually partially successful.

Some drivers still believe that justice was not fully amended as they still don’t see this as a strict enough guideline. Many people believe that drivers should take regular sight tests so it prevents this happening in the first place rather than just waiting for another accident to happen. The subject is still very much open to controversy with a divided split on people unable to come up with a solid conclusion, so it appears that this is the quick solve medium to appease the general motorist population.

The police now have a new piece of technology in their arsenal to use at the roadside, they are nicknaming this technological breakthrough as the “drugalyser” which has recently been approved by the Home Office. Previously if the police suspected the use of the illegal substances they had to take you for a blood test which took a considerable amount of time giving the drugs the possibility of passing through your system without a trace.

The way that it will work now is this new drugalyser, if they suspect you are under the influence of drugs they’ll swab your mouth and look for the compound contained in cannabis called tetrahydrocannabinol, However to convict you they still need that blood test but the theory is that this roadside kit will make it much quicker to be eligible for the blood test.

They are very hopeful for the development of this new piece of kit. They believe it will be further developed in the foreseeable future to be capable of not just detecting cannabis, but other illegal drugs as well. The penalties if you’re found to be under the influence of illegal drugs are very similar to the penalties for drink driving thereforeare capable of damagaing your day to day life.

Also coinciding with this groundbreaking discovery Damian Green the Policing and Criminal Justice minister released a statement describing these drugged up drivers as a “menace to pedestrians, other motorists, and themselves” he was also determined to “ensure the police have access to new technology to ensure drug drivers are caught and punished.

Cannabis is the most widely used illegal drug in the United Kingdom, the reason they are really trying to crack down on not only this substance but this substance when mixed with driving, it becomes extremely dangerous. Cannabis slows down reaction times making a under the influence driver unable to stop if they came across a situation where they needed to avoid a collision.

A British medical journalist has come out and made a statement that “those driving under the influence of cannabis had nearly double the risk of a crash” which really hits the nail on the head at how dangerous this issue really is. The statement that the police are trying to get across here is think twice before abusing drugs and driving, it could kill someone.