Safe Speed Forums

I'm sure you could write a contract to cover all those conditions. Why not? The problem, as I see it, isn't the scope of the contract, but the detection of those without a suitable contract.

The only foolproof way to find those without a suitable contract is to:

(a) have a record of each contract and it's scope
(b) ensure the integrity of the credentials of the vehicle and the driver
(c) periodically compare the vehicle and driver credentials to the records of contract and scope
(d) report violators and issue arrest alerts.

Anything else is just a patch that (basically) won't work.

Not prosecuted. Fined by the DVLA without involving the justice system. Another example of the courts being bypassed to avoid the tiresome need to prove anything to an independent body.

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I am not a lawyer and can't give legal advice. I do have experience of the day to day working of courts and use that knowledge to help where possible. I do not represent any official body and post as an individual.

The guideline used to be custody for a first offence. Then it went down to custody for a second offence. The current guidelines don't link the sentence to the first or second offence but suggests custody only for the most serious offences. Even then they don't suggest using the maximum 6 months.

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I am not a lawyer and can't give legal advice. I do have experience of the day to day working of courts and use that knowledge to help where possible. I do not represent any official body and post as an individual.

We need to differentiate between the people that have made a genuine oversight and the gits that have no intention of getting insurance. You might be having some family trauma and the car is the last thing on your mind

According to my shiney new Highway Code, driving without insurance carries a maximum fine of £5K and 6 to 8 points. If you have no license and no money then that is largely irrelevant.

Driving with no insurance should be seen as just not worth the hassle. It should come with a hefty fine and you should then have to pay for insurance on top, which is paid to the court who then hold the documents. That way you can't scurry off and cancel the insurance. Can't pay, no problem. You do community service for minimum wage, less tax and NI until you fine and insurance are paid. Don't want to do that? No benefits for you.

It also needs to be that the chances are you're going to get caught. So we'll coppers on the road, not cameras. Trying to think of a away that cars can't change hands without insurance that doesn't make it a nightmare for normally law abiding people, but I'm struggling. Maybe there should be something on the log book that needs a policy number before the log book can change hands and the previous keeper is liable, but just thinking out loud really...

Add "plus incarcerate them" and that gets my vote.

You know, I don't know if it's such a big deal. It's not a serious offence, like driving dangerously over the some limit (speed, booze, whatever..). It's not as bad as (say) overtaking on a bend or something like that. I mean, on it's own, it just a financial thing, like shoplifting or fiddling your taxes; i.e. just a "paper offence". Why should we make a big fuss about it?

PS: I'm just asking the question, that's all!

I once worked for one of those big, multinational chemical firms. I had to fix a chlorination unit a few miles away in a pump house, and the boss told me to take a van down there. I asked him about insurance, and he told me that the firm doesn't insure any vehicles at all. If anything happens, the lawyer and treasurer sort it out, so he said. Anybody know if that's still allowed?

That's a bit whiffy, as the driver gets the points...

My guys quite rightly would refuse to drive an untaxed/MOT'd/insured vehicle, and I wouldn't expect them to. Our rather incompetent leasing company have occasionally failed to produce tax discs by the correct date and I've had to find alternative vans.

I think large organisations are allowed to self-insure if they lodge some form of bond with the DVLA.

A company I worked for in the past few years reserved insurance effectively for major third party claims - all own damage had to come out of the site budget. That certainly made drivers feel a bit sheepish when they needed to make a claim.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

When I worked for the CEGB (that dates me) we had the same arrangement. In effect the board was its own insurance company. This was justified on the basis that the average annual losses were less than the insurance premiums. I think that they might have had to deposit a sum of money with some government agency to cover claims against them.

Come to think of it can't a wealthy individual carry his own risk in the same way?

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I posted a reply earlier but it appears it did not make it onto the thread...

I tend towards the point of view that a system should be designed to be fair and of the most benefit to the users/public rather than deciding how something can be enforced and hoping the resulting system is not too bad.

Quick thought on driver based insurance check -

An rfid chip can identify the insurance class of the vehicle and transmit an encrypted UID.

A driver carries their insurance card with an rfid that transmits the insurance classes they are covered to drive and an encrypted UID.

If they do not match or one is missing then the vehicle is pulled by police or a photo is taken by an automated system including the numberplate and a view of the driver.

The recorded UIDs are encrypted with both the owner or driver personal keys and a key unique to the querying device so that the recorded value cannot be tracked from point to point. The encrypted UID can only be decrypted using a key known to the querying device administrators and the owner or driver, the owner/driver key will be on the registration/insurance card and only accessible by making physical contact to the card in a reader and entry of the owner/driver's pin. The vehicle, driver and insurance validity can therefore be positively identified using these UIDs and the photo.

Knowingly driving or allowing someone to drive your vehicle without adequate personal insurance would be an offence as would letting another driver use your card.

In an automated system contact would be made with the registered keeper using the photographed number plate, if the owner cannot be contacted or does not cooperate etc. Then the vehicle UID can be decrypted by the dvla using their keys and a supplied querying device key, the recorded keeper should automatically be notified of this and there should be a legal procedure followed to request this as part of an intended prosecution. The photographic evidence can be used to confirm that the vehicle details linked to the UID match. The driver UID can be decrypted in a similar way using a service that holds insurance company master keys.

The automated system will not be much use unless the vehicle is legally registered, but then neither is anpr. A system could be used to flag vehicles to be stopped by mobile traffic police or at roadside checks though.

I think the trick is not to try to produce a system that is foolproof or that will catch all offences but to make the chance of being caught sufficiently high so as to make the risk not worthwhile. At the same time it should not be possible to automatically log vehicle movements only recover such information in specific cases.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

It's not really surprising that so many don't bother with insurance.

My renewal last year on a £500 Mk2 Golf Driver when up to just shy of £300 TPFT with £150 excess including a rise of £60. I'm 45, never had a point, and have over a decade of no claims. I managed to get it down to £237. Thing is I did a lot of ringing round, and assuming my postcode was pushing up the premium, checked on third party only over. None of them gave a saving of more than £30 for dropping the fire and theft, surely the cover that a bad postcode would affect. And that with no commuting cover, and a low annual mileage. So I can't help but feel I'm being had.

Okay so in the real world £237 isn't for me a real struggle but I can understand why if you didn't have pretty spotless record that even insuring an old banger like mine would be out of your reach.

I can't help but feel that the only way to tackle this effectively would be a drastic overhaul of how we control vehicle ownership. But even if we did find a politician with the guts to sort this it would be a huge unheaval and vehicle owners taxed accordingly. You can bet any effective scheme would receive no public funding and if it included a new computer system would cost us dearly.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

Was only looking at the legisaltion the other day and picked up on this. It would seem that if you can deposit £1/2m, you can in fact do this as an individual. However if I had £1/2 million, it would earn more than my £180 insurance premium in a savings account.

However I understand that most standard policies are for £5m third party losses, so I am wondering if there has been some intervening legislation?

As far as I am aware the police are "insured" in this way.

Ah right, this relates to the interview that I did with Radio 5 live this morning (ah yesterday morning now).

See these references : 1 2 3 MIB 4 MIB 5 MIB 6

Basically the Motorists Insurance Bureau working with the DVLA and Gov have created a database and they say (Annual Reports & Accounts 2007 by Kieth Morris Chairman) :
"it is no longer sufficient to know that you are insured, you need to know that you are on the MID"
(as in on their Database) If you are not there, the Police are likely to (they say) :
"then the Police could seize the vehicle causing much inconvenience and cost"

"every UK Insurer is required to submit details of all insured vehicles to varying targets" - which I read as having different time tables to notify of client details !
The EU 'require' that all EU Countries are "required to maintain and register of all insured vehicles"
So where is this 'going' and why ? (? Road charging & Auto Speeding fines with Speed Limiters) ?
It will continue to divide the Police and Public.
Other methods will better solve this problem and with research there could be even better solutions.
This will (again) penalize many good and law abiding citizens, causing further strain on the economy.
Drivers already have many expenses but this is a fine for a potentially only a paperwork error and NOT even if any offence has even been committed. Further moving away from our right to defend and have any appeal process.
What happens with database errors - or if you are away and cannot do SORN etc
BUT this has ONLY (with ALL their resources) taken less than 10% of cars off the roads from 104000 police queries to the database. That's 11,000 cars against a possible 2 Million uninsured / untaxed / untraceable drivers ! So this is NOT dealing with the problem, anyway, this database exists to satisfy the EU not to rid the uninsured off the roads, but it WILL costs law abiding drivers further fines !

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Again you have used a partial quote. What I actually wrote was:-



It is an old debating trick to use a partial quote and twist it to push a diversionary point. I first saw it almost half a century ago at University and, in my experience, it is the hallmark of zealotry whether religious, political or neo-prohibitionist.

Without departing too far from the theme of this thread I must point out that comparisons of crash statistics between countries is a dangerous area as there are so many variables. I can say that there is no evidence that different forms of insurance has any effect on the crash rates. As an indicative of issues in Australia we have the first world's worst driver testing and training regime, serious distances (you may be hundreds of kilometres from the nearest hospital), sub standard roads (the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane, some 1000 kilometres, reminds me of the A1 in the early 1960's), an old car fleet (average age over 10 years thus most are devoid of current technology) as well as many other differences.

To return to topic.

In my post I pointed out alternate methods of minimising uninsured driving which are simple, low tech and effective. They have no hidden "Big Brother" attributes such as electronic data bases.

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The only thing that should be prohibited is prohibition.

Are you telling me that it is an offence, and an offence of strict liabilty at that, for a keeper's vehicle not to be recorded on the MIB database? That the insurance certificate is no longer required or acceptable as confirmation that a policy is in place?

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

If you are registering an imported vehicle you insure it on the chassis number as part of the process. You then have 30 days to supply the insurance company with the new registration. If you can't - the DVLA may request an inspection at a VOSA centre to confirm the vehicle is as claimed - the insurance company have to cancel the policy because they can't provide the database with your registration. The killer here being there can be a several weeks wait to be inspected. Great.

Barkstar

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The difference between intelligence and stupidity is that intelligence has limits.

But there is no legal obligation to insure a vehicle!

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Never mind all that stuff. Let's keep the moral hazard in place. If we give kids free insurance, more of them will drive (cost influences behavior, as you say above). And (according to premium rates) kids are the worst drivers, so we should be minimising the number on the roads.

Money makes the world go around. "Free insurance" isn't free at all - taxpayers end up paying for it. And the people it benefits the most are the worst (most risky) drivers, and the ones it benefits the least are the safe, low risk drivers. Those are facts that can't be swished away with complaints about "partial quotes".

PS: We seem to have started off on a sour note. Sorry about all that stuff, you know. Perhaps I was a bit curt.

Right, how do I start ?
Nobody wishes the introduction of road pricing, but it seems they do not mind the infrastructure being installed to ensure that all drivers are insured ?
After all, having remotely-read devices on a vehicle is one step in that [powers-that-be] direction.
Please do not say "but there will be safeguards"....there won't.
Return to the tagged number plates scenario http://www.e-plate.com/, you can see that the technology is existing, proven, and in production already.
OK !
We'll JUST use it to check insurance ?
Yeah....in a pigs eye.
That solves the problem of number plate and vehicle id....since you can bet your ass they will be installed on both.....secretly if necessary (or preferentially)
You then have the nationwide installation of remote readers:

Oh well, you can always disable it ?
You see, many of the solutions to uninsured drivers would mean the introduction of the same sort of technology that enables road pricing.....which, in my opinion, is going to come soon anyway....no matter what.
In any case, while the individual or vehicle may not be insured, the accident and/or victim is through the Uninsured Drivers Agreements 1988 and 1999 and the Untraced Drivers Agreements 1996 and 2003, and various eu directives since.
Any system that puts insurance costs on (for instance) fuel would penalise those who are low-risk, particularly those who drive high mileage and DO NOT have accidents.
At the same time, such a system would provide low-cost insurance to high risk groups....those who only drive to-and-from the pub.....and are young.
Personally, if they are crap drivers, drunk drivers, or thick drivers, then I do not want to fund their cheap driving.
ANPR ?
Well, widespread installation across every major road should be complete in a few years.
I'm sure that measures will be introduced so that individuals will not be tracked everywhere.
Oh, sorry, the police are already using it to track suspect vehicles anyway.....the same way they used their older systems to track and deter flying pickets (illegally), so I suppose it rests on the definition of "suspect" or "suspected" ?
Let's divert to another system, one that will save lives and help those dispensing help. The health database.
This is to allow patient data to be available to healthcare workers as and when needed. A very helpful idea.
Hm, the problem is that "healthcare worker" covers a wide spectrum.
More to the point, the data will be available to others. Local area health authorities, and also local taxation authorities....and benefits agencies.....and police !!!
Start: Good idea
End: Good idea
The difference being, good idea to who ?
A good idea to you, will be a GREAT idea to others, if you get my meaning ?
It's called the perversion of power.
And since those IN power will always pervert that power, even in the face of in-built protection, you can take it that the perversion is already planned.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing