A SPEEDING motorist drinking lager at the wheel with her children in the back seat was one incident highlighted by a Keighley councillor at a Bradford Council meeting.

Keighley West councillor Cath Bacon was addressing the district council while supporting its latest moves to crackdown on danger drivers in both Bradford and Keighley.

The council is set to issue speed guns to councillors and residents.

It also plans to fit council vehicles with dashcams to record dangerous driving and hopes to use control orders to ban offenders from the district, or even seize their cars.

These proposals were revealed at a full council meeting by Cllr Abdul Jabar, portfolio holder for neighbourhood and community safety.

The Labour-led motion received widespread support from other parties.

Cllr Bacon praised the impact of the police's Operation Steerside on her own Keighley ward, saying: "I've been privileged to spend some time with the officers of Operation Steerside as they've targeted my ward.

This is not about catching someone doing 31 in a 30 zone either.

"Officers use a tolerance of 10 per cent plus 2mph as per guidelines so in a 30mph zone a driver has to be doing at least 36 to be stopped.

"They’re also not a stealth tax. They are there in full view to ensure that speeds are monitored and lowered.

"A recent poll result showed that upon seeing a speed camera or a police officer with a speed gun, the first thing 83 per cent of drivers do is to check their speed, which is the intended outcome of officers being there in the first place.

"I've seen some pretty varied responses and issues when out on patrol.

"There was the motorcyclist doing 47 in a 30mph zone – only a young lad, who said he didn’t really think speed limits were for bikes, just for cars.

"There was the young lady who drove through a red light on a roundabout just as we were setting off on an evening patrol whose mind was so focused on collecting her child from nursery after a long day at work that she failed to notice the police car following her with sirens and flashing its lights at her for over half a mile.

"And there was an instance earlier this year when a woman took drink driving to the next level because when she was stopped for speeding, with her children in the back seat, she was found to be drinking from a can of lager whilst at the wheel.

"Then there’s the additional intelligence or criminal activity around dangerous driving.

"For example the man who after being spotted driving at 39mph failed to stop and was chased down, apprehended and brought back to his car which was found to contain a large bag stuffed full of cannabis, a sizeable amount of cash and a mostly eaten tub of ice cream on the back seat.

"I assume he had the so-called munchies!"

Cllr Bacon said in the first two weeks of Operation Steerside being expanded to Keighley 110 vehicles had been stopped.

Of these, she said 24 drivers had been stopped for speeding, 14 for use of the phone, 48 for not wearing a seatbelt, 18 for other matters.

Six were found to have no insurance and five vehicles were seized.