But last year, Howell and his wife Philippa received a £1.3 million dividend from the company, the Daily Mail reported. They own 98 percent of DriveTech's shares. However, the huge amount of money worries the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) because, as they claim, no one should get rich from road safety.
"This scheme should not lay people a golden egg," said ACPO's Ian Aspinall, who is in charge of speed awareness courses nationally. "It is all about community safety. This should not be about making money."
"People should not be getting rich on motorists driving marginally over the speed limit," a spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, a motorists' pressure group.
Nevertheless, it seems that there is a little envy in these accusations as ACPO is making money from exactly the same business and probably, Drive Tech is stealing their customers. The DriveTech course is 90 minutes shorter than the current ACPO standardized model and it costs £95, while an ACPO course can cost £60. But in fast paced world, people might prefer to pay more and spend less time on such courses.
DriveTech runs courses for the Met, City of London police and Thames Valley Police as well as for Northumbria, Derbyshire and Hampshire police.
In addition, Howell is also criticized for investing part of the money earned from the awareness courses for personal benefit, buying a £975,000 detached house in 2007.
"Every pound that goes elsewhere out of this initiative is a pound lost to road safety," Aspinall warns.
But Drive Tech said it had reinvested "a significant amount of money" in supporting road safety initiatives over the past five years.
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