Prosecutions of dangerous drivers have fallen to the lowest level for more than a decade but parking tickets have risen to a record high.

The figures suggest that the chance of being caught committing a serious motoring offence, such as drink-driving or driving without insurance, is lower than at any time since the early 1990s. The new figures published by the Ministry of Justice will fuel demands for a reversal of the long-term decline in traffic police. Between 1994 and 2004 the number of police dedicated to traffic law enforcement fell by 21 per cent.

The steepest decline in detections has been in dangerous driving offences, which fell from 11,400 in 2003 to 7,400 in 2006. By contrast, the number of parking tickets more than doubled from 3.5 million in 1996 to 7.8 million in 2006.

The number of drivers taken to court for any type of motoring offence fell to 1.7 million in 2006, the lowest level since 1984 and 15 per cent down on the previous year. Police carried out 602,000 breath tests in 2006, down by 1 per cent on 2005. Over the same period the number of fatal drink-drive crashes rose by 2 per cent to 480.

The only motoring offence to show a significant increase in detections was careless driving, which rose largely because police began to take tougher action against drivers using handheld mobile phones. The number of drivers given fixed penalties for phone use rose nearly to 168,500, up from 129,700 in 2005. The number of drivers stopped for having broken light bulbs or other vehicle defects has fallen by almost two thirds in a decade, from 270,000 in 1997 to 101,900 in 2006. Speed camera offences fell for the second year running, down from a peak of 1.91 million in 2004 to 1.86 million in 2006.

Edmund King, president of the AA, said the decline in detections of serious motoring offences should not be seen as a sign that drivers were becoming more law-abiding. “It just shows that they are not being caught because there are fewer traffic police on patrol,” he said.

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