Drivers to be banned from keeping uninsured cars off road
The owners of a million uninsured cars face having their vehicles seized and crushed under a crackdown to be announced by the Government this week.
Mike Penning, the road safety minister, is expected to change the law to make it an offence for the first time to keep an uninsured vehicle rather than simply to drive while uninsured.
Why on earth would you want to insure a vehicle that you have no intention of using? I have often owned cars that I am not driving for a number of reasons. Sometimes it's necessary to park them on the road. The last time I did it was because the car failed its MOT so I drove Mrs Buckos for a couple of months while I worked on getting mine road legal.
If you drive two cars, you have to have a separate insurance policy on each. Even though you can drive them both together, insurance companies will not put two cars on one policy. Now we are being told we have to insure a car even if we are not intending to drive it. That's a big score for the insurance companies.
Sources at the Department for Transport (DfT) claim that the move will help reduce the £30 estimated annual cost to every responsible motorists in additional premiums to cover crashes involving uninsured drivers.
That's another pile of doublespeak crap that doesn't make any sense. It won't reduce costs at all. Insurance premiums rise every year. It's often blamed on uninsured drivers or young drives but this is not correct. Sure, they have some impact on costs but the real reason we pay so much is because insurance is compulsory. There is not enough competition in the industry.
If you go on a comparison website, you may get a long list of different companies that offer insurance, but when you sign up to one you find it's underwritten by one of the few big companies.
If we also make it compulsory to insure vehicles that are not being driven, one million of them according to the article, it will simply provide another million forced customers for the insurance companies. By definition, this will do nothing to reduce costs, it may even increase them.
Uninsured and untraced drivers kill 160 people and injure 23,000 every year, according to the department.
And they will continue to do so, even after this new law is passed. Uninsured drivers do it because they don't care about the law, they can't afford insurance or they think they will get away with it. A new law won't change this, it will just penalise the law abiding drivers with extra costs.
Under the new system the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) will work alongside the Motor Insurers' Bureau to identify uninsured vehicles, many of which are never taken out on to the road. Their owners will then be contacted by letter to warn them they face a £100 fine if the car or van is not insured by a certain date.
If the vehicle remains uninsured, regardless of whether a fine has been paid or not, it could then be seized and crushed, according to the DfT.
Police gained powers at the end of 2005 to seize uninsured cars, but to use their powers they have to catch the driver at the wheel. Under the new offence of keeping a vehicle while uninsured, the onus will be on drivers to prove that they have insurance, or have completed a statutory off-road notification.
This is not about preventing law breakers, it's about lazy policing. It's already very easy to identify uninsured vehicles by combining the DVLA registration database and the motor insurers database, as stated above. Because it is not currently illegal to own an uninsured car, only to drive it, the police actually have to catch you in the act.
Under this new law, police won't have to get out there and do their job, they will just look on their computer and enforce the law through Royal Mail. I imagine there will be a few fat traffic cops emerging shortly.
We are supposed to have a system of innocent until proven guilty in this country. It is absolutely essential for justice to be done that we keep this system. More often we are putting the burden on proof onto the citizen rather than with the police and courts where it belongs. This is just another example.
"People say, 'Well, it's sitting outside on the road outside my house. I'm not using it. It's taxed but doesn't need to be insured.' It has to be insured, because if someone decides to use it even for an emergency they will not be covered. We are moving fast on that."
Have another look at that last statement:
"if someone decides to use it even for an emergency they will not be covered"
They assume that we are so stupid and irresponsible that the temptation to break the law will always win. We cannot be allowed to think for ourselves. Punishment for offenders is not enough, if they don't take away our means to break the law, we will break the law because we are incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. Our political masters must look after us to ensure we do no wrong.
A poll of 2,000 people by Direct Line, the insurance company, in November, asked what amount should be imposed as a fine for driving without insurance - and produced an average figure of £900.
In addition, 34 per cent wanted those caught to have to take their driving test again, while 28 per cent supported life bans for offenders.
Well that's just typical. I would like to meet the people that think a lifetime ban for offenders is acceptable and have a little chat with them. Even murderers eventually get a second chance. That last paragraph is worthy of this post
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| The state will protect you from yourself |
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