The BBC article the original article links to[0] says he was disqualified for 18 months, which means he is banned for driving on any road for that time and has to reapply for his licence at the end of that period[1].

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-439345...

[1] https://www.gov.uk/driving-disqualifications

Following through to the associated BBC article, the language used there is “disqualified”, which, as I understand, is a license suspension. It’s often useful to drill down further to get closer to the actual source in cases like this to avoid reading too much into language that may be imprecise or used with journalistic license. In this case, I don’t know what technically it would mean to be “banned from the highway” other than to have one’s license suspended or revoked.

Not just imprecise, but outright incorrect: "He’s been banned from the M1 for eighteen months" (the M1 being a specific motorway). No, he's banned from driving.

Yea, seems like a pretty severe under-reaction to only ban him from that specific highway. And for only 18 months at that. An 18 month license suspension seems more reasonable.

He was indeed banned for 18 months - the article must have misinterpreted the story. Here's a BBC News article covering it http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-439345...

"The Queen's Highway" is an archaic a sounding but still valid way of referring to public roads ( and footpaths ) in the UK.

To be banned from driving on the highway is to be banished to private grounds.

A quick Google suggests that the disqualified in the original BBC story means he had his license suspended which makes a lot more sense.

He was actually banned from driving entirely, the jalopnik article is incorrect.

And an investigation into tesla’s autopilot attention detection system