Rights and LimitsStopped in the street or in a vehicleStopped while driving in Scotland
Stopped while driving in Scotland
What you must do and what refusing costs you
Every claim below links to the law it comes from, with the wording quoted so you can check it yourself.
You must
Refusing is a criminal offence.
Stop your vehicle when a constable in uniform requires you to.
Road Traffic Act 1988, s.163(1) (as it applies in Scotland)
“A person driving a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road must stop the vehicle on being required to do so by a constable in uniform”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-10-16
Failing to stop when required is a criminal offence.
Road Traffic Act 1988, s.163(3)
“If a person fails to comply with this section he is guilty of an offence.”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-08-25
As the person keeping the vehicle, give the information as to the identity of the driver when a chief officer of police requires it.
Road Traffic Act 1988, s.172(2)(a)
“the person keeping the vehicle shall give such information as to the identity of the driver as he may be required to give by or on behalf of a chief officer of police”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-08-25
Refusing costs you
Refusing may carry a penalty, allow an inference to be drawn against you, or be an offence in itself.
Refusing to name the driver carries a fine and an obligatory licence endorsement.
Obligatory rather than discretionary, which is why refusing is routinely the worse outcome.
Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, Schedule 2, Part I — RTA s.172
“Failure of person keeping vehicle and others to give police information as to identity of driver, etc. , in the case of certain offences. Summarily. Level 3 on the standard scale. Discretionary, if committed otherwise than by virtue of subsection (5) or (11). Obligatory, if committed otherwise than by virtue of subsection”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-08-25
What the law says
What the law provides — the power, who can use it and when, and what follows — quoted from its source. The sections above say what you must do and what refusing costs you.
The section 172 duty is limited to identifying the driver — it does not require you to answer questions about your speed or your journey.
Road Traffic Act 1988, s.172(2)(a)
“the person keeping the vehicle shall give such information as to the identity of the driver as he may be required to give by or on behalf of a chief officer of police”
Read it at legislation.gov.ukquote checked 2026-08-25
One of the few places the law largely converges
Driving law is where Scotland and England & Wales genuinely converge. The Road Traffic Act 1988 extends to Scotland as well as England and Wales, and the duties on this page apply in Scotland as they do there, with one difference in the duty to stop: in England and Wales, section 163 also requires you to stop for a traffic officer. Those words were added for England and Wales only, by the Traffic Management Act 2004. In Scotland the duty is to stop for a constable in uniform.
You must stop your vehicle when a constable in uniform requires you to. Failing to do so is a criminal offence in itself.
The section 172 duty
If a driving offence is alleged, the person keeping the vehicle must give the information as to the identity of the driver that a chief officer of police requires. This usually arrives as a written request rather than a roadside question, and — as in England and Wales — refusing it is not a way of avoiding the underlying offence.
The penalty for refusing carries a fine and an obligatory licence endorsement, which is frequently a worse outcome than the offence being investigated in the first place.
What the duty does not cover
The section 172 duty is narrow: it requires you to identify the driver, not to answer wider questions about your speed, your route, or what happened. If questioning moves beyond identifying the driver into an interview under caution, the ordinary rules apply — including the position on silence covered on this site’s Scotland police-questioning page, which is genuinely different from the English position.
Related pages
Last reviewed 2026-08-25. Next review due 2027-02-25. No solicitor has reviewed this page — see [email protected] if you think something here is wrong.