I am not suprised so many people drive without insurance today, with quotes for many younger drivers being four figures, while the fine for being caught is usually a few hundred.
If you drive an anonymous car sensibly you have no chance of being pulled for a spot check by the police, hence the only risk of being caught is if you have an accident.
Surely some system can be devised to stop people taking this risk and hiking up our premiums, I'm paying roughly the same now as what I was when I first started driving, despite being older with full no claims driving a lower ins group car!
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Insurance discs in the window, like the Irish do (or used to anyway when I used to pull them)
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Statistics are 1 in 20 drivers are uninsured.
Like you say why bother paying £1500 to insure a Vauxhall Nova 1.2 when its worth £500 ? The fines are miniscule ,the max i have heard of is £250 with 6 points.
One of the reasons insurance premiums never go down is the fact we are paying for all these uninsured drivers accidents.
The only way i can think of stopping uninsured drivers is thru a system of producing your insurance/drivers licence when buying petrol. Maybe some kind of smart card with your photo,insurance policy number,drivers number on it. Of course this will never be possible civil liberties and all that.....
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Steve
Petrol is bought for many more uses than cars. Don't you think the big brother state has too much power as it is?
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Alyn
I know it's not perfect and you might land up paying a few pence per litre for the insurance levy when you buy petrol for your lawnmower, but at least it's a starting point. If it can be improved on, then great.
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Steve,
The loss of the car is not the only risk. If we are found guilty of crippling someone we could then end up with a huge bill and even lose our property if we could not pay.
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Very good point.
I reckon we should start by insisting on the display of a valid insurance certificate on the windscreen, incorporating a very-difficult-indeed-to-forge hologram that can be validated on the spot by a simple gizmo.
Make the relevant data accessible to traffic wardens and police via hand-held devices tapping into a central database, which probably exists already. But, if it doesn't exist, then it should be established and jointly funded and run by the DVLA and the insurance industry.
Then, multiply by five or ten the level of fine imposed on those found driving uninsured.
Then, no-claims drivers apart, tip the balance of premiums in favour of those who have to make claims for repairs to damage caused by accidents for which they are not responsible, i.e. penalize the guilty parties more heavily.
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So far as I can see, the only foolproof way is for third party insurance (RTA cover) to be state-run and included in the cost of the fuel, making it unavoidable and universal.
Although the claims procedure would probably take as long as the waiting list for an orthopedic operation!
It is unacceptable to have accident victims without proper recourse to compensation in a civilised country.
It would then be up to the owner whether they wanted to extend the cover, to include fire and theft or comprehensive, with a commercial company.
Since most of the insurance companies claim that they are losing money on motor insurance, they should jump at the chance to off-load the risk.
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Brian
I refer you to my response to Steve g
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Brian's idea if fine, but it would mean that older people with a clean accident record subsidising tear-aways. With no no claims bonus to worry about, if you drive an old wreck, why not push in queues everywhere. Who cares if there is a prang?
I believe there is a sort of Government insurance where uninsured people have accidents called the Motor Insurers Bureau, which pays for personal injury only I think. All insurance companies contribute to it and pass it on to us in premiums. Perhaps this should be extended to propertry damage too?
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Brian,
I know that this would put up the cost of my petrol, but if my full comp came down by 75% then go for it.
Bill
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I know im young and foolish and all. Someone will explain why I am in a bit, but surely we dont have to have insurance?
Why dont people who are not insured stump up the whole cost of repairs to all cars, objects and people if they are to blame?
Or you could pay into an insurance scheme where you pay a set ammount, and they agree to cover everything. Rather like house insurance [so I believe]
This idea would immediately solve all the problems, you dont have insurance, you crash you pay for everything. You have insurance, they pay.
Wheres the fatal flaw in this idea??
Kev
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Smack your 1.0 nova into a new M5, can you afford to fix it, I think not.
Sorry for sterotyping Kev :-)
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Kev
Never mind damage to property, what about damage to humans, could you afford the cost of keeping someone who you seriously injured for the rest of their life.
Grow up.
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Can you tell us how many folks could afford to bear the cost of third party claims? They could run into millions
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And if they don't have sufficient assets to pay?
On second thoughts you are not serious - are you?
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Kev, sounds good until you are faced with personal injury claim. A young child locally suffered brain damage following an RTA and was awarded IIRC £1.8 MILLION, don't know about you but I don't have quite that much in the bank at present. I will accept that these mega cases are not that common but it's surprising how much the cost of whiplash is nowadays.
Unfortunately, SWMBO and No1 son had to make use of Motor Insurers Bureau a few years back and the chap we dealt with there reckoned that the figures for uninsured drivers was as high as 1 in 3 in certain age groups. When you see some of the quotes for younger drivers relevant to the cost of their vehicles I can certainly see why they don't have insurance.
A check on insurance and MOT is one of the reasons that is given for retaining the RFL disc, the only problem being that a valid disc doesn't necessarily mean that the driver is insured, only that someone was when they bought the RFL.
Steve G's idea of a sort of swipable card checked at petrol stations is probably the closest to foolproof but then again I suppose you could always get your insured mate to fill up your car. Short of thousands of wardens walking the streets carrying out spot checks I really can't see an easy way out of the problem.
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Yeah, but if this was the alternative and pay your own way, then everyone would choose to have insurance. Then no one would have to pay £1.8mil.
Why should straight people have to pay extra to bail out those who didn't really feel like paying insurance.
Kev
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Once possible way to ensure cars on the road are insured is to take off the road those that aren't. If you're caught without insurance, your car would be impounded, and released only on payment of a fine, minimum £5000 or 25% of the new value of the car (if greater). If the fine isn't paid within two weeks, the car is then either auctioned off (the proceeds going to the HNS) or scrapped.
Andy
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Guys,
I've read all the previous posts with interest.
Consider this - a child runs out in front of you from between two parked cars - this might be judged to be your fault. The child is disabled as a result of the accident.
With your insurance to take care of things, this disabled child could get security and income for life.
I'm certainly not a perfect (or psychic) driver, and I'm happy to pay a reasonable sum in insurance in case the unthinkable should happen.
Which of course does not mitigate bad or careless driving...
(Sorry to be all serious...)
Martin.
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Alyn
Yes your right we are becoming a big brother nation. But in this case the majority of law abiding (insurance payees) are paying for a others who totally disregard the law. I would be willing to carry such a ID card if it meant the chances of being hit by a uninsured driver decreased. Who knows our premiums may even go down (he says tongue in cheek).
Maybe driving uninsured should carry a prison sentence ?
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...or at least make them pay whatever the premium would have been + £1000 fine.So Mr Nova would end paying a £ 2500 fine or doing bird.
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Recall reading in the mid 60's? Australia were muting a scheme whereby as some above suggest, a proportion of what was paid for a gallon of fuel went to the Government to fund an Insurance Scheme. Thereby, the more use you made of your vehicle (greater 'at risk') the more your paid. Claims were settled within 6 weeks.
Anybody from Oz out there to confirm whether it took off?. Growler your nearer any gen?
DVD
PS Wasn't A. Tune Ups reply re the CVJ gaiter earlier thread brilliant? Entry of the week.
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Mark is correct.
Section 144 Road Traffic Act, 1988 gives an exemption from the usual third party insurance to a vehicle owned by a person who has deposited and keeps deposited with the Accountant General of the Supreme Court the sum of £500,000 at a time when the vehicle is being driven under the owners control.
Greater sum may be ordered by Sec of State.
See you all at the Supreme Court tomorrow with your wallets?
DVD
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Kev, Your idea didn't meet with approval, but I don't think you were serious. I say that but....... were you?... Really?
The suggestion you made has been countered with the obvious resistance that I would have hoped for and there's no need for me to simply repeat it. It is only in the nature of things that a young, relatively inexperienced driver must expect to pay more than his older counterparts. It is very much the case that with age and experience comes a lower accident rate expectancy. We've all been there and anyone honest enough will admit to having done more stupid things in their youth than when older. Improved enforcement of the law is obviously needed, by whatever method can be shown to be effective.
I'm afraid that I am one of the few contributors here who doesn't have a distinct anti police/government/establishment/speed camera/abolish speed limits/do what you want as long as you have fun - agenda (if that's the right way of putting it). If I was Police Officer (which I'm not) and regularly subscribed to this site and considered the contributors to be representative of the public in general, I'd be pretty disheartened. Perhaps most of them are?
Off now to pay my insurance premiums..... :-)
KB
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I lived in Oz thirty years ago and, even then, the state government operated a combined "licence" and third party insurance system, with a common renewal date and disc, which not only bonded very securely to the windscreen but, when removed, deformed so that it could not only used again. This meant that an *individual vehicle*, rather than a driver, had third party cover, whilst more comprehensive insurance could be obtained on top of this system according to the needs of individual drivers.
Working on the basis that the Aussies must have moved on a bit since then, and that so many of our UK based insurance companies operate in Oz as well, it surely can't be that difficult for the Association of British Insurers, Motor Insurers Bureau and whoever else to come up with a much more foolproof scheme to be operated in conjunction with DVLA or other appropriate government agency (but without the power to divert funds as was so scandalously done with the proceeds of "road fund licences").
Add on the end-products of some of the very worthwhile points made by plod-u-like, Roger Jones, Brian, Cockle et al - but not by Kev *definitely* not Kev, who does have the good grace to admit that he is "young and foolish" as most of us had already guessed - and we would be well on the way to a system which, if not foolproof, could not but be a vast improvement on the widespread problem which exists today.
If the statistics quoted about the proportion of uninsured drivers are even remotely accurate, then the outcome of a combined VED and third party insurance system would surely be that more people would pay less individually to produced a bigger "pot" (so that presumably even the insurance companies could not complain), leaving all law abiding drivers and other road users (and their dependants), in a much better position than they are at present. Yes, there would inevitably be some abuse of the system, but hopefully not nearly as much as there clearly is at present - withall the attendant heartbreak.
Ronnie
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On the DVLC website there is a motorcycle VED consultation paper, one of the suggestions being, since m/c tax discs are easily stolen, that it should be stuck on the numberplate.
Great idea - NOT - numberplates are easily removable, so someone is then running round with a clone of your number PLUS your tax disc.
Who thinks up these ideas! Does anyone ever think them through?
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Hmm,
I was only questioning the current system where if you dont have insurance, you get away scott free and everyone else picks up the tab for it. And suggesting that if you dont have insurance you should pick up the bill. Therefore a very good incentive to get insured. Hmm £2000 a year insurance or £2,000,000 injury claim.... Do you feel lucky...punk?
And in answer to the people to tell me to grow up, so what im young, you aint.
Question my thoughts, but dont question me.
Young and happy for it
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Don't hang your head in the corner, Kev. As I've said to you before - I'm a Kevin and know how hard life can be as such.
At least you're giving it some thought, which is excellent, it just happens that no-one can imagine a system whereby, in the case of say, personal injury - you can't get blood out of a stone - if an individual got a bill for the recent Gary Hart tragedy and had to pay at £2 a week........
Thanks though for getting everyone thinking about it. And yes, you do have the benefit of youth, which some of us/them don't have any more.
KB
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Kev,
I still think you are winding us up.
Anyone, young, middle aged, or in their dotage must see that a sizeable proportion of motorists would risk driving without insurance if it wasn't legally required- many do now.
Generally these would be people who can't or won't afford it; and they certainly couldn't "pick up" a huge third party claim. What does society do in that case? Send them to jail? That will help the victim a lot!
L
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Oh dear! I don't think anyone, and certainly not me, was questioning *you* whatever that means. Indeed, we completely respect your right to assert, as you did quite voluntarily, that you are "young and foolish" and, apparently, "young and happy" too.
Yours, old, experienced and very happy.
Ronnie
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> On second thoughts you are not serious - are you? Quote, tell me that that is not questioning me.
Maybe Leslie, if you cannot afford it, then dont drive! You still aint getting it. Why should everyone pay for those who dont want to/cant afford to.
As you point out, there are people drving around with no insurance, what happens when they have an accident? Who pays? Surely [my point again] is that if you do not choose to have insurance, then you should take that risk and pay the consiquences.
I believe this is how it works with house insurance for example.
Kev, still feeling misunderstood
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Kev,
I still think this is a wind up. But in case it isn?t, I think you should read what all the people have said on this thread and perhaps, just perhaps, it is you that ?ain?t getting it?.
Of course it is an injustice that insured drivers pick up the tab for those who are irresponsible and don?t insure their cars. Who has said otherwise? However you asked for the fatal flaw in your idea and you have been given it. It is who pays for the Third Party liability when the uninsured hasn?t the means to do so.
Your analogy with house insurance makes no sense.
If I choose not to pay for house insurance, and my house burns down, I am homeless.
If I choose to insure my car third party and I write it off through my fault, I lose my car.
If I choose not to insure my car and damage someone innocent, or their property, under the current system they can get compensation. Other motorists pay by having higher premiums which pays out.
Life is full of injustices and by and large the responsible pick up the tab for the irresponsible.
You are certainly justifing your opening remark on your initial post. And proving the old adage "Employ teenagers now while they know it all"
But it is a wind up - and you have won.
L
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Going back a few years, many local authorities ran their bus fleets uninsured. This was possible because they had enough cash available to be able to cover the cost of any claim. I suppose things have changed for bus companies, but would a pop star need to buy insurance ?
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steve paterson wrote:
>
> Going back a few years, many local authorities ran their bus
> fleets uninsured.
Not quite - its called self-insurance, as Avis for example. You are issued a bond.
Without insurance is illegal, self insurance is not.
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The Armed Services do not individually insure their equipment - including vehicles. The Government provide the 'self-insurance' Mark refers to.
Bob
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Some correspondents seem to take very lightly the chances of being pulled up by the police for a routine check.
I am middle aged driving a boring Volvo estate, but I have been stopped twice in the last year in routine checks - every 5th car stopped for no apparent reason, but then given a full check on tax, insurance, MOT, tyres, lights, etc.
Perhaps Dyfed-Powys police have nothing else to do, there being virtually no crime in this part of the world.
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Mark(Brazil), don't really understand the legal in's and out's of the insurance you mention, but would a wealthy individual have to buy car insurance if he didn't need it, or could he 'self insure' ?
Steve.
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A wealthy person could post a bond and self insure.
However, the requirements are stiff, and it does not mean that your liability is limited to that amount.
I`ve got a document lying around about it somewhre, I`ll try and dig it out.
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