Drones deployed to clampdown on dangerous driving in the Scottish Borders
Last updated 24th Jun 2026
Drones are being deployed by police in the Scottish Borders to help improve road safety.
Today's meeting of the Safer Communities Board has heard the technology is being used by officers to monitor motorcyclists on some of the region's most popular routes, following a series of serious and fatal crashes.
Councillors were told officers can film riders from above before stopping them and showing footage of any risky manoeuvres.
The initiative comes as Police Scotland reveals it recorded 70 dangerous driving offences and 154 careless driving offences across the Borders during the last financial year.
In addition, 103 drink or drug-driving offences and 62 speeding offences were also detected.
Chief Inspector David Rourke, Police Scotland's local area commander for the Scottish Borders, noted that the number people who were killed or seriously injured on our region's roads is down slightly in the last financial year.
But he added: "What I would acknowledge is obviously any single death on our road is one too many."
Officers have recently attended events at both the Carter Bar and St Mary's Loch to drive home the road safey message.
"There's some real strong work at the moment being undertaken by our roads policing colleagues in that space of making our roads safer," the Chief Inspector added.
"We have a fairly new Inspector covering the Lothians and Borders, and he's doing some real cutting-edge stuff at the moment in respect of road safety, involving our drone unit, as an example.
"We're using the drone to film the motorcyclists coming down the road, and then we're able to stop them and demonstrate where they've gone wrong and the dangers that they've placed themselves in during that section of the road."
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The latest police report also reveals the theft of vehicles in the Borders rose 83 per cent in the 12 months up to April, with the Chief Inspector adding that "cross-border criminals still pose a significant challenge"; while shoplifting was also up 46 per cent over the same period.
"We've improved how shopkeepers can report the incidents, which is certainly contributing to the rise in that area," he added.
"And, in respect of this financial year, we secured some funding to tackle specifically shoplifting across the region, which will obviously be shown in the next report.
"But it would be remiss of me not to drop in the highlight from the current solvency rate, which is sitting in the high 80%, which... I'm going to hazard a guess, it's probably sitting there as one of the highest across Scotland."
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