12,000 unaware they are not legal to drive

AROUND 12,000 drivers in Malaga Province should be off the road. But they continue to drive unaware they have lost all their points from their licenses, the Spanish Traffic Department (DGT) has revealed. Meanwhile, in the whole of Spain, there are more than 5,000 who have lost their licenses at least twice, having lost their 12 points after already having to take courses to recover them.

Drivers criticize the was the DGT has managed the system, with some 400,000 people in Spain still on the roads not knowing that they have lost all their points because it takes the DGT too long to inform them of the fines, and in most cases, they didn’t know they had been fined until it’s too late to appeal.

More than 108,250 drivers who had committed serious or very serious offences have received letters telling them that their points will soon run out, but critics say a more efficient system is needed.

The penalty points system for driving licenses in Spain, where drivers start with 12 which are ‘removed’ for traffic offences, has helped to reduce the number of deaths on the roads since its inception in 2006, the DGT says.

In March 2009, three years after the instruction of the new system in Spain, it was revealed that of the province’s 100 municipalities only Fuengirola and Malaga City Local Police were able to properly enforce the penalty points system.

Since then an unspecified number of municipalities have installed the necessary software to enable Local Police to register fines with the DGT database for points removal.