More than one in ten motorists sent on a drink-drive rehabilitation course is from Eastern Europe, according to figures on the growing problem of unsafe foreign drivers on British roads.

Eastern Europeans caught by roadside breath tests are also twice as likely as the average drink driver to be serious offenders who have at least two-and-a-half times the legal limit of alcohol in their systems.

The figures come a month after the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB), which handles claims from crashes caused by uninsured drivers, said that the number of claims against Polish drivers had more than tripled in the past two years. No records are kept of the number of foreign drivers or foreign vehicles in Britain but the total has risen sharply since 2004, when ten countries joined the European Union.

Foreign vehicles can be driven legally in Britain by non-residents for six months in any 12 before they have to be registered and licenced here. But few checks are made to ensure owners are complying with the law. It is also very difficult for police to check whether a foreign vehicle has insurance, a safety certificate or is registered in its home country.

TTC, Britain’s largest provider of drink-drive rehabilitation courses, said that the proportion of Eastern Europeans among attendees had risen from less than 3 per cent a year ago to 11 per cent. Last month, 120 of the 1,100 drivers referred by courts to TTC courses were from Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. Of those, 28 had given breath samples more than two-and-a-half times over the limit.

TTC said that many of the Eastern Europeans it dealt with had poor English and did not understand the court procedure or the rules governing the three-day rehabilitation courses, which reduces the length of a driving ban by a quarter. Foreign drivers also tended to have a poor grasp of British traffic laws.

A Polish teaching assistant told a course leader that she had “no idea at all” about the drink-drive limit. The limit in Poland is 20mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, much lower than Britain’s 80mg. But the level of enforcement is low in many areas, with police tending to focus on occasional random breath-testing operations on national roads.

Jenny Wynn, group director of TTC, said: “We are seeing a disproportionately high number of referrals onto courses from Eastern European countries, some of which have a heavy drinking culture.”

The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety urged the Department for Transport to translate its road safety leaflets, especially those on drink-drive laws, into Polish and other Eastern European languages.

The MIB said the number of crashes involving uninsured Polish vehicles had risen from 938 in 2004 to 3,312 last year. It had also dealt with 745 cases involving uninsured Lithuanian vehicles last year, up from 232 in 2004. The MIB is lobbying for a European-wide database of insurance policies to allow police to check instantly whether a foreign vehicle is insured.

The RAC Foundation said that the problem could be addressed only by increasing the number of checks made by traffic police on foreign vehicles. Edmund King, the foundation’s director, said that foreign drivers were usually able to escape speeding tickets and other offences enforced by cameras because police were unable to obtain their names and addresses.

Almost 12,000 foreign drivers escaped punishment after being caught speeding in London last year. Wiltshire police dropped 5,200 cases and Thames Valley 3,700. The DVLA is targeting Polish and Lithuanian vehicles in an operation designed to catch foreign drivers who fail to register in Britain. But it admitted that it was having difficulty gathering sufficient evidence.

The Government is planning to give police new powers to issue on-the-spot fines to foreign drivers caught committing traffic offences and to clamp those who refuse to pay.

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