By Gemma Simpson, 14 November 2007 15:15
NEWS
Record numbers of uninsured vehicles are being seized and crushed thanks to automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) technology, research reveals.
The use of ANPR has led to more than 100,000 uninsured vehicles in the UK being seized this year by the police in roadside checks, compared to 78,000 during 2006.
And out of the vehicles seized this year some 45,000 have been crushed, according to figures from the Association of British Insurers (ABI).
Nick Starling, director of General Insurance and Health at the ABI, said uninsured drivers are a menace, often drive unroadworthy vehicles and the cost of compensating their victims adds an extra £30 per year to premiums paid by honest motorists.
Wi-fi at the airport
Find out which airports have the best internet connectivity - and share your own experiences - at atlarge.com.
Uninsured driving costs law-abiding motorists in excess of £500m per year, according to figures from the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB), which works with government to compensate the victims of negligent, uninsured and untraced motorists. On UK roads, 160 deaths are caused annually by uninsured motorists.
Ashton West, group chief executive of the MIB, said the fight against uninsured drivers has stepped up a gear and expects vehicle seizure numbers to increase over the coming months.
Comments
There is 1 comment. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Hmm, sliding into dangerous territory! The surveillance society is enlarged yet again. Yes, I'm sure the "facts" about cost to all of us are correct, more or less, but nobody seems to have asked the question "would these people actually have driven any better, not been in the accident etc etc" if they HAD been insured?
In other words, some or all of the alleged costs to the rest of us would have been incurred even had these people been insured - not least because, if the implicit assumption that they are worse drivers than the rest of us is true, then their presence in the community of the insured, would, because of claims they caused, have caused all our premiums to rise......
..... so, we seem to be tolerating ever more intrusive observations of all of us for a benefit that is not actually clear or proven??? We are not thinking carefully enough about the real implications of the "surveillance society".
Civil society is base on TRUST between individuals and the state and each other. The moment that trust is forcibly removed, which is what a surveillance society achieves, something profoundly important has been damaged.
Oh and in anticipation of the "if you have done nothing wrong, what do you have to fear?" argument...... the flaw in that argument is that the moment you have pervasive surveillance it becomes all too easy for the state to monitor and attempt to constrain activities that today would be seen as perfectly reasonable protest and statement of opinion. (e.g protesting about the closure of your local hospital, an impending law/bypass/construction etc. that you feel you have a right to object to.) And as soon as that happens what you have is a dictatorship and a police state. That the people implementing it were elected is no longer the point.
I, for one, would rather live with a little risk from selfish morons who don't insure their cars than in a police state.