Tens of thousands of drivers banned from driving disregard it. They can do so because the chance of being caught is "far too low", said a police judge.
The police catch quite a few drivers every month who are actually not allowed to drive reported Het Laatste Nieuws. Since 14 June 2020, officers have been able to look up whether someone has a driving ban during a traffic check.
The Mercury Database links driving licenses to convictions and it is now yielding results, according to figures given to Minister Wouter Raskin by Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden. From June 2020 to June this year, the database has already been queried 309,261 times, yielding a considerable number of hits: 19,802.
''In other words, 6% of checked drivers were found to be driving around with a driving ban,'' Raskin said. The actual number of people getting behind the wheel despite a driving ban, however, remains a mystery.
However, if we set the previous figures against the 5,947,479 cars registered in our country at the beginning of August, those nearly 20,000 drivers are almost certainly a serious underestimation.
Monitoring is too labour-intensive
"To increase the chance of being caught, my party launched the idea back in 2020 to link the Mercury database to the ANPR camera network (cameras with automatic number plate recognition). This would allow the police to carry out much more targeted checks." But that idea was buried by Minister Verlinden because a driving ban is not linked to a number plate, but to a person, meaning that the police would therefore also stop innocent drivers for a check.
''But is that so problematic, if we also catch drivers who drive around with a driving ban? Who do we actually want to protect? Children like Merel De Prins, or traffic offenders who deliberately make a mistake?" asked Raskin.
The issue was put to police judge Peter Vandamme, who has since completed a career of more than 23 years. "You know my hobbyhorse, don't you: sentencing. There is no one to monitor whether the sentence is actually carried out," he sighed. "It's too labour-intensive for the police to check everyone, so they keep driving around with the driving ban."
Do you really think I will stop driving?
And that is dangerous, Vandamme stressed. "There is almost always some other offence associated with it, which then also establishes that the driver had a driving ban: ignoring a red light, speeding, or worse."
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According to Vandamme, the offenders don't lose any sleep over it. "They always come off with their stories: 'We need the car for work', 'We need to be able to take the children to school', and so on. And when they have to submit their driving license at the registry, they also say it plain and simple: 'You don't think I'm going to stop driving?' Leaving the clerks at the registry open-mouthed."
