Couldn't find the old thread (sorry).
After the banner headlines some weeks ago about 38% of motorcycles being untaxed and screams in the house of lords, there would appear to be a slight mistake having crept into their figures.
www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/News/newsresults/mcn/20.../
?It was the best we could do at the time, but in previous years the estimates have been inflated.?
Department for Transport admits motorcycle tax evasion figures ?were inflated?
New tax evasion figures released today show that only 6.5 percent of bikes seen on the road during surveys are without tax ? making a mockery of earlier Department for Transport reports claiming nearly 40 percent of motorcyclists dodged road tax.
The report comes just three weeks after the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee singled out motorcyclists as lawbreakers, saying 38 percent of us were dodging tax.
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I bet the correction doesn't get nearly as much publicity as the original allegation.
I'm still getting grief from people with comments like "Most of you bikers don't even pay your road tax".
There's a big difference between 6.5 and 38% !!!
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I have in my posession a letter from Edward Leigh MP, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. I took him to task on this issue;
Quote; "In 2006 the DOT conducted a roadside survey of over one million vehicles; of those motorcycles SEEN ON THE ROAD sixteen per cent were untaxed. The Department then used established statistical techniques to draw from this figure an estimate for the whole motorcycle stock (the figures were checked and verified by an independent body). The final estimate was 37.8% with a 7.9% margin of error.
-snip-
The Committee appreciates that the majority of motorcyclists are law-abiding taxpayers; however it would be remiss of the committee to ignore the findings of this survey because of the risk of offending people........ the Committee is recommending that the DOT and DVLA work with motorcycle industry bodies to reduce concern about the reliability of sampling methods used in measuring VED evasion by motorcyclists."
I'd still dispute the 6.5% as being too high.
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I had read somewhere else (may MCN as well) that for the roadside checks, unlike cars with ANPR and automatic lookups, they just made a note of the bike registration number.
Then, many months later, they looked them up on the DVLA database.
So, not only would they not find incorrectly written down numbers, if the bike had been SORNd in the meantime, it would show up as untaxed!
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I had read somewhere else (may MCN as well) that for the roadside checks unlike cars with ANPR and automatic lookups they just made a note of the bike registration number. Then many months later they looked them up on the DVLA database. So not only would they not find incorrectly written down numbers if the bike had been SORNd in the meantime it would show up as untaxed! A very good point, given that many of us SORN our bikes over winter. However, my letter from Mr. Leigh does state that the figure is "for untaxed motorcycles, not those on SORN " so my guess is that someone simply cocked up the stats.
Bet they wish they'd lost the computer discs on this one! ;-)
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I suppose it might depend on where the survey was held. In W Yorks 57% of car drivers are said to be uninsured. Over 10,000 vehicles seized, which is rather startling. Link: tinyurl.com/22obkw
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