New driver news - Young driver car insurance and drug driving tests

Young driver news - Drug driving car insurance holders may soon take new test

The danger of driving under the influence of drink or drugs is a message which has been championed by road safety charities, for example Brake, for many years.

Often, these organisations try to target school children so that by the time they pass their practical driving test, and start looking for young driver car insurance, they are aware of the potentially devastating consequences of reckless driving and are deterred from behaving in a hazardous manner behind the wheel.

However, in order to facilitate the prosecution of a greater number of the new drivers and more experienced motorists who do not heed these warnings an independent company at the University of East Anglia, Intelligent Fingerprinting, has invented a machine which can quickly and accurately detect if a road user has taken drugs.

It is stated on the company's website that the device "uses high sensitivity detection reagents to identify metabolite substances [chemicals released upon interaction with drugs] in the sweat contained in fingerprints".

This mode of detection may be useful to police officers since currently they either ask the motorist to undertake a Field Impairment Test, or analyse a swab of saliva – the two most commonly used tests.

However, the former is not always accurate and does not tell the officer which drugs are in the driver's system, while the problem with the latter test, as Intelligent Fingerprinting's business development manager states, is that "some drugs do create dry mouth syndrome [and] people can also adulterate the sample by putting something else in their mouth".

Using the sweat from a person's own fingerprint will mean that police officers can be sure that an illegal substance has been ingested by the driver, and will help create a body of evidence against offenders.

There is a possibility that this drug detection device will go into full production in 2012 if the Home Office sanctions it.

This could mean that safe and considerate young driver car insurance holders may see a reduction in the cost of their cover as more dangerous motorists are removed from the roads, leading to a reduction in the number of accidents.