Latest "Fantastic" Coalition Idea.

[warren t claim]

Apologies for the source of this press article.

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... -cars.html

 

"Ministers are to discuss with garage giants how to use the cameras to nail reckless motorists.

 

It is hoped they will be linked to the DVLA computer in Swansea which would identify uninsured cars.

 

The pump would automatically switch off with an alert flashed to traffic cops. PM David Cameron believes the crackdown would force uninsured motorists off the road as they would not dare to fill up. A senior government source said: "Most garages have the technology. It's just a case of adapting it.

 

"Motorists already have to wait a few seconds before they fill up while their number is checked against a list of petrol thieves.

 

"It shouldn't take much longer also to check if the vehicle is insured. This could be a major deterrent which we hope will drive uninsured motorists off the road."

[Cavcraft]

Hmm, how much do those number plate making machines cost?

[SambaS]

What if your driving a car not on the MID. I have in the past quite legitimately, even been pulled for 'no insurnce' by T5's with anpr

[dollywobbler]

Yeah, it's not a bad idea APART from the fact that it's VERY easy to not be on the MID. So yet again, another hurdle for the innocent motorist, while those who don't give a shit will just nick someone else's plates.

[SambaS]

anyway, there's plenty of small stations with no cameras. And just cos a car is on MID doesn't mean the person driving it has bloody insurance! Daft

[Lankytim]

It seems fair enough, we all want to screw over uninsured motorists and this seems an easy way of doing it. It will make the life of the average ROAD WARS uninsured chav pretty difficult, but it will also catch out traders, people who have just insured their car e.t.c. e.t.c.

[scooters]

Hmmm....this is going to be a disaster ...why?

 

Well the info on the dvla computer is only as good as the idiot who entered it...we all know how useless the dvla ate and the mi database is also pretty shonky. Most insurance companies take at least a day to enter your details...once took Churchill a week to add my details. This will result in law abiding drivers being unable to fill their cars up because the car they have just bought and insured is not yet entered.

I can understand why the petrol retailers association are against this...its not their job to enforce the law.

 

These twats would be better off using the time and money to run a full scale review of the motor insurance industry...simplify it and make costs transparent for customers and insurance more affordable.

 

Yet another example if slipping one between rhd motorists cheeks...shouldn't be surprised though as this government seems as keen to fuck the motorist as the last one was

 

 

Twuntso

[Formula Autos]

Great. So now someone on trade insurance* might have to ring their insurer (kerching: admin fee!) every time they want to drive a car to a petrol station to put something in the tank.

 

Basically, it makes trade plates compulsory.

 

*There's a 99.98% chance I have this completely wrong.

[warren t claim]

[Lankytim]

Just had a thought, what about foreign vehicles?

[willswitchengage]

Who's going to pay for all the ANPR equipment? Fair enough Tesco or BP could probably afford it, but what about the few remaining private stations? Would they be obliged to install the equipment or be forever plagued by 15 years old in Vauxhall Corsas with tinted windows as it's the only place to get fuel?

 

Tbf we never got road pricing of the fuel duty stabiliser, the DfT motoring division is a load of hot air.

[Cavcraft]

According to my (trade) insurance you get two weeks to add a vehicle to the database. As others have said it can take ages to go live which could be a problem, though if you add to the database as soon as you get the motor it shouldn't always be a big problem.

 

If the government (any government) are so arsed uninsured/untaxed drivers then clearly they need to get more ANPR equipped cars and perhaps get the coppers to do more spot checks. ANPR is fine to stop uninsured/untaxed cars but I've not heard of anyone being pulled for a spot check in ages now and whilst the number of illegal drivers is surely dropping ANPR doesn't flag pissed up drivers up.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

GR3 4 French tourists and Polish OAPs visiting their kids.

[John F]

 

lol

[STUNO]

Loving our unregulated insurance even more after reading this

I just saw an ad on the telly for Third party ins, with added cover for an uninsured driver. If you get hit by an UNINSURED driver you are covered. I assume that if YOU hit an uninsured driver, don't bother calling the insurance co.

Had a look at the website and there is a payout limit of $3000 (1500 pounds)

[254575]

i was listening to a repeat of moneybox live on r4 last night, and there was a case of a chap who had moved from Bristol to north London, upon moving, his insurer told him his postcode was uninsurable and cancelled his insurance on the spot and charged him £30 for the privilege.

 

at that point they had an insurance industry spokesman on, who said, you should always inform you insurance company if you are considering moving house and it was his own fault for not checking before he went.

 

considering!?!!? for fuck sake, they are supposed to be a service industry, how about you just do what i pay you to do and stop acting like the police. they are gangsters pure and simple and the public are slowly waking up to this.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

The best thing is when you call them and say "I'm considering swapping my Lada Riva for a Peugeot 305, would it cost me extra?" and they reply along the lines of "we can't really tell you until after you 've bought the other car".

[Ross_K]

I assume that if YOU hit an uninsured driver, don't bother calling the insurance co.

 

If you hit an uninsured driver, you're screwed worse than if you hit an insured driver.

 

The cops can't be arsed chasing up accidents caused by uninsured drivers, but they'd sure as fuck make it their mission to come after you...

 

It's like getting in trouble for shooting someone who's broken into your house - the scumbag's human rights are more important than yours.

[dollywobbler]

At least the tide seems to have turned on the burglar question. A couple of high-profile cases last year found in favour of the home/business owner. Which is good. You should have the right to protect your property and loved ones.

[e287yba]

I was expecting the worst when I noticed the title of this thread. I was not disappointed! This is a reflection on the current UK alleged-government-with-a-lower-case-g , and certainly not anyone who has posted on this thread .

 

It's just not thought through, as is so often the way.

 

Other posters have said most of what my thoughts are, and while most (if not all) filling stations have ANPR (though not linked to anywhere) it is generally not of high quality - I read in a few places that between 1/3 and 1/2 of all vehicle number plates are misread (oops!).

 

But, Yeah! great idea in theory, linking filling station cameras into an ANPR database. If the cameras are made reliable and they use the MID system used by the police then I would guess it won't be using live data but an old copy of the MID previously downloaded (10 minutes ago? a few days ago? a week ago?) which is another potential delay in peoples' insurance details being current on ANPR databases (and hence refusal to sell fuel to them)...

 

(Just to reiterate, the ANPR on a police car uses stored data, not a live link - this data might only have been downloaded 10 minutes ago but equally it might be a few or several days old and some of it WILL inevitably be incorrect - yet they actually police the roads using this information!)

 

If it wasn't so pathetically easy to get around the whole ANPR thing, and if ANPR used live data, then "policing by database" would be credible. But it is, it doesn't and it isn't.

 

 

Cameron, GET A GRIP on what's actually wrong with society and deal with IT and THEM rather than the responsible majority of members of society who behave themselves!

[cobblers]

According to my mates brother's girlfriends uncle's landlady who once slept with one of the traffic cops off Road Wars, most of the time the ANPR data in police cars is apparently more like weeks out of date, than days.

[Spiny Norman]

OK, I'll be the lone voice who says, "So what's the problem?"

 

Fair enough I know that everything TEH GUBMINT does is utterly reprehensible and insurance companies are all evil, but does no-one want to see them take steps to rid our roads of people who shouldn't be on them?

 

So, if a petrol station camera pings up a car not on the MID database, what's the difference between that and Plod's ANPR system doing the same thing? If the car shows as not being insured why shouldn't they check it out in case it ACTUALLY ISN'T INSURED? As a driver it's your legal responsibility to be able to prove to Plod you've got insurance, how difficult is it to have your policy number and name of your insurer stored in your phone or written down on a bit of paper in your wallet?

 

If you get stopped and you've got a properly legal car and can prove you're insured there's no problem. It's the ones who come away with all the "well, err, it's my brother's car but I'm on his insurance because he's in the trade and errr...." that stand to suffer from this. The same ones who'll cause you sleepless nights and ££££s after they plough into you then leg it because they're uninsured.

 

I'm all in favour of anything that gets uninsured/irresponsible/unlicenced asswipes off the road.

[Ross_K]

(Just to reiterate, the ANPR on a police car uses stored data, not a live link - this data might only have been downloaded 10 minutes ago but equally it might be a few or several days old and some of it WILL inevitably be incorrect - yet they actually police the roads using this information!)

 

If it wasn't so pathetically easy to get around the whole ANPR thing, and if ANPR used live data, then "policing by database" would be credible. But it is, it doesn't and it isn't.

 

According to my mates brother's girlfriends uncle's landlady who once slept with one of the traffic cops off Road Wars, most of the time the ANPR data in police cars is apparently more like weeks out of date, than days.

 

The cops here in Ireland started using ANPR last year or the year before. The insurance database isn't accessible by the cops ANPR system. So how do they know if you're insured or not?

 

The road tax renewal form asks you what your insurance expiration date is. That's what's passed to the ANPR system...

 

And I dunno if it's an urban legend or not, but traffic cops are allegedly turning off the ANPR warnings as they're getting so many pings from people driving around with no road tax. Believe that one or not

 

 

And back on topic - surely there's a data protection issue here. The guy running the petrol station's got no business knowing anything about my insurance status unless I crash into his petrol station. And also, is he getting paid for doing the work of the police? And if so, are taxpayers paying for it or the insurance industry?

[Cavcraft]

OK, I'll be the lone voice who says, "So what's the problem?"

 

Fair enough I know that everything TEH GUBMINT does is utterly reprehensible and insurance companies are all evil, but does no-one want to see them take steps to rid our roads of people who shouldn't be on them?

 

So, if a petrol station camera pings up a car not on the MID database, what's the difference between that and Plod's ANPR system doing the same thing? If the car shows as not being insured why shouldn't they check it out in case it ACTUALLY ISN'T INSURED? As a driver it's your legal responsibility to be able to prove to Plod you've got insurance, how difficult is it to have your policy number and name of your insurer stored in your phone or written down on a bit of paper in your wallet?

 

If you get stopped and you've got a properly legal car and can prove you're insured there's no problem. It's the ones who come away with all the "well, err, it's my brother's car but I'm on his insurance because he's in the trade and errr...." that stand to suffer from this. The same ones who'll cause you sleepless nights and ££££s after they plough into you then leg it because they're uninsured.

 

I'm all in favour of anything that gets uninsured/irresponsible/unlicenced asswipes off the road.

 

Because why the hell should we carry our insurance doc's on us just for the privelidge of being dry bummed at the pumps?

[Craig the Princess]

OK, I'll be the lone voice who says, "So what's the problem?"

 

Fair enough I know that everything TEH GUBMINT does is utterly reprehensible and insurance companies are all evil, but does no-one want to see them take steps to rid our roads of people who shouldn't be on them?

 

I think every post on the thread was of the mindset "Decent idea if the ANPR system wasn't so crap". If they system was robust then fine but would the police be called to everyone who fills up within a week of buying/insuring a vehicle?

 

Anyway as we all have see 1,000,000 times on World's Wildest Police, Camera Wars the scum who drive around ininsured as a rule wouldn't turn up at court/pay their fine/would drive while banned etc.

[Guest]

To be honest, I'd rather we stopped wasting any more money on stopping drivers via unreliable computer methods based around an insurance system which really isn't fit for purpose. Proposals like this are clearly made as a result of the insurance industry wanting to strongarm people into what is almost a monopoly. If insurance was completely reasonable in cost, nobody would bother risking points/fines over it.

 

There's some countries out there which have no requirement for car insurance altogether and they seem to get by, so I don't see why we can't be the same. Have some kind of basic insurance built into road tax to cover damage to street furniture and suchlike, then it's up to you to sort cover out for your own car if you think it's worth it. If someone crashes into your car, you claim through the insurance for the damage and they repair it - your level of cover determines if/how they repair it and whether you get a courtesy car and suchlike. The other party doesn't get involved, fault doesn't come into it, so there's no incentive whatsoever to maximise any claim. The insurance blame game seems fair in principle, but just doesn't work - it's a big toss-off between two companies (often under the same umbrella) whilst courtesy car costs and suchlike rack up, so a £50 bumper scrape can end up costing the best part of a grand, which comes out of the great big pot that everyone pays into. If I was on my phone and someone knocked into me and I dropped it on the floor, I'd probably just go a bit mental for a bit, then suck it up and move on. Cars should be the same.

[Pete-M]

A lot of foreign countries are only just getting ANPR set ups.

 

They make things simpler by putting the insurance and MOT expiry dates on the reg plates. You have to carry vehicle documents, insurance paperwork and your licence or you get dry bummed at the roadside by Dibble.

 

This country has ANPR, it's bloody expensive, so they're gonna use it all they can. If that means that you have to put your cars on a database then so be it. It doesn't mean whoever is driving it is the one who's insured to do so, but it means that if a car doesn't blip up at all on the ANPR it is going to get a pull.

 

I really don't see a problem with this. Uninsured vehicles should not be on the road.

[Mr H Sceptre]

So what would happen if I have an insurance policy for my car that also insures me to drive any other car 3rd party (which I have)......so if I am then driving for example a mate's car (totally legally & insured, but my docs. are in my own car, obviously), where would that leave me?

 

Also, as mentioned before, what about foreign registered vehicles? What about company cars? What about hire cars?

 

God I hate Cameron & this shit-tip of a Government.

[Guest]

I presume the government will also think about the consequences for the little guy behind the counter who has to explain to some gripper that the computer says he can't have any petrol.

[Cavcraft]

*Especially a 14 year old with a dodgy haircut driving an 11 plate Transit pick-up with high sides. Then it'll be racism too.