>>>> "It monitors all passing vehicles and flags up any without insurance. These are then double-checked and the vehicle is stopped and if no valid insurance is produced the vehicle will be seized. The owner of the vehicle then has seven working days to produce valid insurance if they don't the vehicle will either be crushed or sold at auction to regain the costs." Is this legitimate?
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If not it damn well should be; and if they DO crush the car it'd be nice if some of the scrotes were inside it, seen too many of my mates' lives wrecked because of uninsured drivers. Unfortunately, with the initial "cop" all they can do is put the notice on the PNC, and after that it's more by luck than anything else if they catch the offender.
AFAIK "working days" means Monday thru to Friday; with most insurance companies having weekend cover either on-line or through call centres, that effectively gives the owner TEN days in which to sort it out.That should be enough for anyone; furthermore I'd think that given the creaking pace at which police administration is done it'd likely be closer to a month before they actually crushed the car.
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They really need to crack down on this. I have to drive through these parts of Bradford fairly regularly and I'd be very surprised if many of the drivers have ever seen a test centre never mind an insurance certificate.
I know it's a cliche to say driving standards are bad in an area, but it's got to be seen to be believed around there. Lots of knackered Japanese stuff that is can only be worth tuppence, no great loss to them if it's damaged or lost so no point in paying more for insurance than the heap is worth I should think is the mind set.
A respectable colleague of mine's wife was learning to drive and regularly took the car out on her own to practice. When I mentioned insurance to him, I just couldn't get the idea over to him of the requirement for insurance and that no way could she be covered. And this chap is a bright bloke, just chooses not to understand the law.
The police are of course stretched these days, but a team seizing and crushing cars (and selling the scrap) could surely fund itself a la scamera-partnerships.
There might be some argument and debate about speeding, I don't think there'd be too much reisitance to a team removing uninsured, untaxed or unlicenced drivers from the road.
Edited by Citroënian {P} on 28/01/2008 at 14:57
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It's easy enough to check as you can use the askmid thing to check a registration. The dvla vehicle check also shows make and model so you can make sure it exists first.
Large sticky notices with 'uninsured scumbag' written on them and stuck all over the miscreants cars might also do the trick :-)
The police pick up a max of 100,000 cars a year so you are unlikely to be stopped if you drive uninsured. Now there more than a million uninsured drivers I think the fight has already been lost as with automated enforcement all that happens is the honest but slightly dozy get slammed and the deliberately dishonest have nothing to fear.
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"It monitors all passing vehicles and flags up any without insurance. These are then double-checked and the vehicle is stopped, and if no valid insurance is produced the vehicle will be seized.
The owner of the vehicle then has seven working days to produce valid insurance, if they don't the vehicle will either be crushed or sold at auction to regain the costs."
Is this legitimate?
Yes it is. And a damn good piece of legislation it is too. We seize an awful lot of cars.
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Sounds to me like we need to spend a bit of money and get some ANPR vans out there on a regular basis. maybe if these drivers start to loose their cars on a regular basis they might get the message. In fact, I wonder if scrapping enough cars would drive up used car prices and price them off the roads? It seems that part of the problem is that there are so many cheap cars about.
As to the very high premiums often seen for 17 year old, the problem is that insurance companies do not want to insure them (for obvious reasons), but they have to offer insurance (a legal requirement IIRC to offer 3rd party) so what thye do is to offer with a massive premium - hence you hear of £3k premiums etc.
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A somewhat misleading thread title...:-)
In my area the police regularly nab uninsured drivers, along with those for other offences, through the use of ANPR. The vehicles are immediately seized.
The more offending drivers caught the better.
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Not surprised. My insurance renewal came through £400 more expensive than last year; quite glad I'm abroad for six months from May.
The problem is that some people believe that they have a divine right to own a car and don't care about insurance whether it's cheap or not. Others are getting steadily teed off with the soaring insurance costs, which are going up as a direct consequence of uninsured drivers and the compensation culture.
I lived in Leeds for three years and I would be surprised in some areas if even 40% of cars were insured or the drivers had licenses. Red lights were routinely run, pedestrian crossings ignored, and if you arrived at the back of a queue it seemed customary to lean on your horn to announce your presence.
You'd regularly follow cars with the shock absorbers gone and bald tyres, but fortunately the prayer trinket swinging from the rear view mirror protected the driver.
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Sounds to me like we need to spend a bit of money and get some ANPR vans out there on a regular basis.
I wonder if the problem is that the car may be insured for one driver (so it would be OK on ANPR) but it's very difficult to know who if it's that person who is driving?
As to the very high premiums often seen for 17 year old the problem is that insurance companies do not want to insure them
Many now simply won't quote 17yr olds - it's an increasing trend apparently.
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The biggest problem is the ridiculously low fine. It encourages certain people to gamble on being caught.
A maximum £2,000 fine AND confiscation of vehicle would be quite appropriate.
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What makes you think the fine would be paid? And the vehicle would be replaced for £100 down the pub that night.
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The biggest problem is the ridiculously low fine. It encourages certain people to gamble on being caught.
The really insane thing is that once you've got a "no insurance" conviction, the premums rocket!
It's not just very young drivers - I renewed the insurance on our Jazz today and thought the renewal was a bit high. Turns out having our 23yr old daughter (who has her own car and insurance and who will likely rarely drive the Jazz) exactly doubles the premium. I checked several companies and they were all the same.
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They don't know that you need insurance in the U.K.
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I always thought no insurance was practically a jailing offence. Certainly in the event of catastrophe there would be a moral, and should be a hard-edged legal, obligation to make good financially.
Perhaps some sort of bond-slavery could be instituted. 'Yea, and even unto their children and their children's children...' That would concentrate minds. Where such could be deemed to exist of course.
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the seizure of uninsured cars is going to noticeably increase in the London area, because each of the London Boroughs, on a rolling programme, will be authorising their normal patrolling officers to seize vehicles (whereas up until now it has only been traffic officers that can do it and they are an ever decreasing breed)
a private company receives the vehicles, in a more than efficient manner
it is a simple and straightforward process, which can be one car at a time on an ad hoc basis or by having a high profile initiative, with a road check and a vehicle transporter ready to 'have them away'
initially it will be used to target the oik, but eventually will be a 'catch all'... and rightly so...if i can be bothered to pay for my insurance, so can everyone else... can't wait
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As several motorists on Merseyside will testify, the whole seizure thing is not foolproof. Several " insured " vehicles have been seized and impounded for days before Police have admitted that the Insurers had not updated the necessary information centers.
To add to these drivers misery, the private car compounds involved refused to release their cars with out the full storage payments being made.
I believe that there is at least one case going through the County Courts as an owner attempts to re coupe his losses.
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To add to these drivers misery the private car compounds involved refused to release their cars with out the full storage payments being made. I believe that there is at least one case going through the County Courts as an owner attempts to re coupe his losses.
It should be the policy in situations like that to release the car without charge AND pay compensation to the driver for the temporary loss of the vehicle.
You shouldn't be out of pocket just because the insurance database is out of date.
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Police have admittedthat the Insurers had not updated the necessary information centers.
It's not only the insurers that seem to have a problem updating their database, it would appear that the DVLA also have the odd problem with updating driving licence details, see this report from our local paper about a chap spending a night in the cells.
tinyurl.com/338exf
On the whole I think the idea of ANPR equipped vehicles stopping and getting uninsured/untaxed vehicles and/or unlicensed drivers off the road is good BUT we must remember that with that goes the caveat that the databases in use are only as good as the integrity of the data entered by the various agencies. Sadly Government agencies and database integrity are not words commonly used in the same sentence.
Should we now ignore the previous police advice that we should not carry all our documentation in the vehicle for obvious security reasons in the event of theft so that we can give on the spot documentary proof in the instances where the database is incorrect and causes us to be stopped?
I am about to renew my insurance and change company and as the industry standard is seven days to update the ASKMID database with changes of details I shall certainly be carrying phone numbers and details of policy numbers on me in lieu of a Certificate of Insurance during the changeover period just to be on the safe side.
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Perhaps some sort of bond-slavery could be instituted. 'Yea and even unto their children and their children's children...' That would concentrate minds. Where such could be deemed to exist of course.
And also assuming that the children know who their parents are! Anything like the estate I used to live on in Derby and that'd mean 90% of the kids on the street would be sold off to pay for the misdemeanours of two scrotes.
Hang on, that's not such a bad idea is it? ;-)
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Merseysides C Con appeared on a local radio phone in early last year and promised to look in to the problem but there have been other cases since. One driver told how he came close to being sacked following his attempts to use public transport to get to work whilst he took a stand over the costs that where being asked of him to get his car back.
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I was recently told by a traffic cop that in london when the automatic number plate recognition cameras are operating that 65% of cars come up as uninsured
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Is that an accurate figure or does it inc vehicles being wrongly flagged up ?
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All I was told was that was the percentage recorded on the ANPR cameras.Its irrelevant really because if all the policemen in london or perhaps that should read policepersons who wern't tied up with paperwork were on the streets for say a week with ANPR equipment they would only get about 1%of the offenders.Sad but true.
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ANPR is only a guide, the next step would be to check PNC (Police National Computer) again, to see if the data has changed i.e. something has changed since the ANPR was loaded.
ultimately you could contact the insurer direct if at a reasonable hour
even with flaws it's got to be a good tool... and worry to people who are anti-social enough to drive around with no insurance
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Many of the scumbags that drive with no insurance have little in regard to assets that could be confiscated should they damage people or property.
In New Zealand 3rd party Ins is not compulsory - however anyone causing damage has their income tracked and deductions made to cover the cost over many many years.
I understand that someone seriously injured would not receive adequate compensation and we need the MIB but the miscreant has deductions week in and week out from his pay (a la Income Tax & NI ) to remind him /her.
In the UK they are fined £150 and banned for a few months. Will that stop them driving next week / month without Ins or a licence? The answer of many is no but there are not enough police checks to pick them up.
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Hang on a sec.
Quick analogy here to TV licences... Licence Records Office has IIRC the largest database of its kind in the country. Detector vans and hand helds for blocks of flats (most of them dummies if the urban legends are to be believed). Vast majority of the population is law abiding and pays for a licence. Authorities know your house has been built and what its postcode is even before you've paid a deposit. Seems to be an efficient system with relatively low numbers of defaulters.
So why can't we do all of this with cars? Given that watching East Enders for a month without a licence, whilst a bit naughty, is not generally linked to joy riding, drugs, robberies, gangsters, car crashes, drink drivers...
But then again...
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Quite simple. Unless laws are enforced people will opt out.
If the police are aware of the problem they should act or be given support (or a kick up the backside) to make sure they act.
Or are they looking for Mr Big again?
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Bilboman - that's easy to answer. TV licensing enforce their role with a vengeance. If you've never been on the end of one of their hate mail campaigns consider yourself lucky! It takes a pro-active approach to solving insurance problems. Watching programs like Traffic Cops, it appears to be caused by the police being unwilling to take a hard line on offenders for fear of alienating the community on more serious matters.
Roadside tasings... hmm.... too much, d'you reckon?
** On a side note, TV detector vans cannot detect TVs. You might be able to work out that an old one is switched on, somewhere, but you could never identify what channel it's watching. We had a TV in our house for solely watching DVDs and playing on the XBOX (you couldn't actually get a TV signal there, the aerial was broken), but we caught the peeking toms at TV licensing peering through the windows one day.
It's all a fear campaign, and much that I dislike it, has the potential to work for car insurance.
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Further to Falkirk Bairn's comment on N.Z., too many people were fleeing the country to escape their court-ordered repayments / fines / etc., so it is now cross-linked to the Immigration computers so that they are stopped at the passport barrier. The option is given to pay up forthwith or go back home. As they have already checked-in, and handed in their hold baggage, failure to pay up becomes rather tedious, especially if they were just going on holiday complete with return ticket and no intention of permanently fleeing. Some high-profile cases seem to have had an effect.
Back to the motoring link - when car confiscation was first introduced here, mainly against boy-racers who terrorised the neighbourhoods, the Police soon ran out of storage space because, as mentioned above, the boys would just buy another cheap old dunger for a few quid. Licence?? Insurance?? Sorry, I didn't do foreign languages at school.
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Just a quick reminder to those of us who do buy insurance for cars - keep a copy of the insurance cert in the car!
The ANPR cameras get the insurance details form the MID, and anyone who works in the insurance industry will tell you that the MID is not 100% accurate or up to date. If we are to see an increase in the use of ANPR then it's also very likely that more innocent motorists will get caught up in it.
Having a copy of (or maybe the original?) insurance cert in your car could save lots of aggro. The MID are putting lots of pressure on insurers to improve their time to suppply, but there will always be errors. Then of course there are the other exceptions like DOC policies, trade policies, fleet policies etc which also cuase problems for this system.
However, overall I think it has to be a good thing.
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Not saying it isn't a good system . However it is flawed and for an innocent motorist to lose their car for a couple of days and then be hit with a bill for removal and storage is WRONG.
Some Police forces are simply saying to innocent motorists, take it up with your insurers, you're not on the data base so it's naff all to do with us.
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There's a little piece (as in short) about updating the MID from the point of view of the brokers here:
tinyurl.com/2f7sbc
It appears that some of them have progressed beyond keeping client details in a shoebox under the bed. Note that changes apparently effective this month mean your details should get updated in seven days as opposed to the previous fourteen.
Edited by Dipstick on 29/01/2008 at 10:15
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Quick analogy here to TV licences
TV license evasion detection is very easy! They have databases of all homes in UK. They just check against which homes license fee is not paid.
Homes don't move but cars do - so they are more difficult to trace.
Also, if a house has TV license, anyone can watch TV on that house.
A car's insurance may be invalid if someone else drives the car!
Now TV license is something I'm happy to evade if someone can tell me how to! I'll be happy if next govt. abolishes this ludicrous license! Don't know if any other country has this.
Sorry of being off topic. {now if we could get back on topic please! DD}
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 29/01/2008 at 10:28
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I have a simplistic attitude to many of these things but of course it will never be adopted.
We live in a welfare state. With many rights and priveleges . And unless you go to jail you apparently cannot lose those.
Change that system and I suspect it will engender a change of attitude. *
Round here we get roundups in notorious areas with 20-30 cars caught and towed away/crushed in 2-3 days.
* It will be deemed unacceptable that people are responsible for their actions.
Edited by madf on 29/01/2008 at 11:53
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it makes me laugh when you see comments about lazy cops or the police needing a kick up the backside to find a few more uninsured cars
tv licence detection staff are doing only that i.e. detecting licence evaders
police officers are doing considerably more than traffic matters...and.. concentrate on what they are told to concentrate on, because they are public servants and work within a disciplined environment, with a strong diciplinary code...ultimately those nowadays doing the 'telling' are politicians, whereas in the old days it would have been the Chief Constable
it would be quite easy to find uninsured cars, (without ANPR, that is just an aid).... however you'd need the time and resources to do it, which there most definitley are not and in the forseeable future this is not due to change, although the legislation for seizing cars has been welcomed and will be utilised wherever possible
please direct your ire at those that 1, can change things, 2, should take responsibilty for the overall picture...not the poor sods in the engine room
lastly, please remember that the vast majority of cops, for obvious reasons, are law abiding people..and it really grates on them when others free-load and break the law. If you're in a position of authority and something really irritates you, do you not think if you could, you'd do something about it?
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Some stuff removed. Now if you could try and keep this to motoring discussion, I can put the scissors away again.
DD.
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I remember seeing a programme on TV about uninsured untaxed drivers. These coppers were driving along in London and the ANPR went off every few seconds. They were asked why they didn't stop them and the response was that as about 10% of cars are untaxed then they would spend all day doing nothing but this and they had to do other things. It seems that they use ANPR to pull people for other things.
When HMG started saying that congestion was getting out of control and that we would all have to pay more, I wrote to my MP who is in the opposition, asking him to ask HMG to make concerted efforts to remove all untaxed cars. That way you could get rid of 10% of all cars on the road and lessen a lot of the congestion while upholding the law. Got some rubbish answer.
Having said all that, I have seen 3 road checks around me in the past few months with ANPR, policve bikes, cars, DVLA, car transporter. Never seen that around here before so maybe they are doing a little bit.
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lots of the middle classes lie to get insurance too
say they do less miles than they do
the car is garaged when it is not etc
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In the context of this thread there is no problem if the 'middle classes' lie to get insurance. The insurance company will still pay third party claims even if you lied about mileage or the car being garaged.
Of course it's unlikely that they would pay any first party claims, but then who would care?
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The mileage question used to be a general question but now they want to know the exact figure. With out a cyrstal ball it can be difficult.
" Ummm , you put 11,106 when you have done 11,107"...claim rejected.
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I have never been asked to give the exact figure. Its an 'up to' figure that they want, I usually make an over-estimate. One year I realised I was going to exceed it by about 1000 miles so called the ins co and they noted it and did not increase the premium.
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I was not aware of an insurance company ploy to "price young drivers off the road".
My son is 22, 4 1/2 years plus full license, four years car ownership, no accidents, no claims, no convictions.
I am 48, 30 years driving experience, two claims in last four years, one conviction in last four years (SP30).
It costs him more than it would me to insure the same car! Surely he is the better risk - there must be a policy to price young drivers off the road!
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Insurers have a policy to price anyone they see as a high risk off the road. Mainly that's young drivers. That's just the way it works, high risk=high premium.
Unless you would prefer that we all pay a premium of £800 regardless of what car, age etc
Insurers are free to quote any premium they like. You have a choice and can go elsewhere.
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