Why axing the Met's roads policing unit could be bad news for every motorcyclist

The Metropolitan Police is considering scrapping its dedicated Roads and Transport Policing Command as a cost-cutting measure. If approved, the move would see the responsibility for traffic policing being absorbed into other parts of the force. The proposal has already prompted debate over what it could mean for road safety, crime prevention and the specialist policing that motorcyclists rely on.

And while taking a dedicated team of specialists off the job and handing it to other, perhaps less experienced officers sounds like a bad idea, the Met insists it is looking at ways to continue delivering the services Londoners expect while making significant financial savings.

Call me an old grey-haired sceptic, but that sounds a little too good to be true.

On paper, there are arguments in favour of the move. The Met, like many police forces across the UK, is under intense financial pressure. Specialist units are expensive to run, and senior officers may believe integrating traffic policing into broader frontline operations will make better use of limited resources. In theory, officers could become more flexible, responding to whichever incidents demand attention most urgently rather than being tied to a specific discipline.

But that theory doesn't sit comfortably with many people who actually understand the nuanced role of a traffic officer.

The perception that roads policing begins and ends with speeding tickets has never really been accurate. Specialist traffic officers are often among the most proactive police on the force, carrying out intelligence-led vehicle stops, disrupting organised crime, intercepting county lines drug traffickers, recovering stolen motorcycles and cars, and identifying uninsured, disqualified or dangerous drivers (hopefully) before they cause serious harm.

For motorcyclists, those officers also investigate serious collisions, reconstruct fatal crashes and enforce offences that directly affect rider safety, from drink and drug driving to dangerous overtakes and distracted motorists.

Former senior roads commissioner Beverley Bell has warned that removing specialist roads policing could lead to greater criminality, while critics argue that replacing experienced traffic officers with general response teams risks losing the kind of knowledge and skills you can’t just develop overnight.

There's also the uncomfortable reality that cameras can't do everything.

Average-speed cameras and ANPR systems are effective tools, but they don't spot an impaired driver weaving across lanes before a collision. They don't notice a rider carrying stolen bikes in the back of a van. And they don't use instinct to identify the car that just doesn't look right. For that, you need a human, which is why teams like the RPU are so important.

According to reports, the Met currently has around 1,500 traffic officers covering London's 12,000 miles of roads. Last year the capital recorded around 20,000 collisions, including 96 fatalities and almost 3,900 serious injuries. Those figures alone underline how much work dedicated traffic officers already have on their hands.

What should concern riders who live, ride or visit the capital is that road policing has already been shrinking nationally for years. Government figures have repeatedly shown a long-term decline in dedicated traffic officers across England and Wales, even as vehicles, congestion and road use have continued to increase. London's proposal could be seen as another step in that direction.

It's also worth remembering that motorcyclists are disproportionately represented in casualty statistics. Riders account for only a small percentage of road traffic but remain vastly overrepresented in deaths and serious injuries. That makes effective, knowledgeable road policing arguably more important for bikers than almost any other group of road users.

The Met insists no final decisions have been made and that proposals are still under consideration. If the restructuring ultimately preserves specialist expertise while reducing administrative duplication, the impact may prove smaller than critics fear.

But if this really is the beginning of the end for dedicated traffic policing, it raises a difficult question. Saving money today might look good on a balance sheet, but if it results in fewer dangerous drivers being caught, more organised criminals slipping through the net and fewer officers with the expertise to investigate serious crashes, it could become a false economy that riders ultimately end up paying for.

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