Last year, company car drivers incurred £8m in fines, a 15% rise according to a Lex Autolease study.
Its ‘Company Driver Fines and Penalties’ survey used data from its 275,000-strong vehicle fleet, and despite the fines hike, the total number of offences only went up by 2.7% to 124,430.
Lex attributed the spike in fines to an increase ins bus lane infringements of more than 25% to 14,698 offences, together with a sharp increase in London Congestion Charge penalties.
Lex suggested that the recent reduction to 75g/km as the Congestion Charge exemption threshold had been a factor in the rise of these non-payments.
However, the number of endorsable offences such as using mobile phones when driving was much smaller, up 1.7% from 33,930 to 34,495 cases, and there was a 17% fall in fines issued for general traffic offences such as entering box junctions and stopping on red routes.
