The UK Insurance Blog

Further to my piece a couple of days ago, I’ve just been reading some information from the Manchester Police saying that uninsured drivers are six times more likely to have convictions for driving un-roadworthy vehicles and nine times more likely to have convictions for drink-driving.

And their crimes are said to put an extra £30 on every car insurance premium.

The latest technology fitted to lots of police cars ensures that vehicles not registered on the database system (it checks insurance, road tax, driving license and MOT) automatically trigger an alert to officers who, under the new powers, can seize cars. - That’s Good !

Drivers unable to produce proof of insurance have their vehicles impounded.

To reclaim their vehicles, owners must pay £105 for recovery, £12 a day storage, and a £200 fixed penalty notice or a fine imposed by a court. - That’s Bad !.

So for around £350 they can retrieve their cars and be driving around uninsured again, because it’s a certain fact that they won’t be wanting to pay the insurance premium that’s demanded following their conviction for “no insurance”, drunk driving etc.

If an owner fails to reclaim the vehicle within 14 days, it is crushed, scrapped or sold. - Ha…there’s the answer then. Lock ‘em all up for 15 days when you seize the car. When they get out and pay their fine present them with the block of crushed metal - Oh I like it!.

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I’ve just been reading an article on the Huddersfield Daily Examiner that claims that one in five of the vehicles driving around their area is uninsured. Incredibly, it then goes on to claim that in the BD3 district of Bradford an unbelievable 57% of vehicles is uninsured.

Now I don’t know if their figures are accurate, they come from The West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority, which is a public body comprising 22 councillors from the areas around Leeds & Bradford. With their stated aim being “To be the driving force co-ordinating the provision and development of high-quality public transport services for everybody within West Yorkshire”, they’ve certainly got an agenda to disuade people from using their cars but I would still imagine that they wouldn’t come out with such statistics if they weren’t accurate.

What’s mystifying me is that when I watch “Road Wars” on Sky telly, the police cars are all equipped with fancy cameras that read number plates and then check with databases somewhere to ensure that the vehicle is taxed and insured. Presumably, police cars throughout the country are equipped with the same high tech equipment so why are so many people being allowed to drive around uninsured?.

I’ve seen the Sky TV cops seize and crush a car before now, but can’t remember what offense the perpetrators had committed. If the police were to seize and crush every uninsured car being driven on our roads then the country would be a better place to live in. And whilst they’re driving around checking for uninsured vehicles they could enforce another law that’s totally ignored, they could arrest and disqualify people using mobile phones whilst driving !!.