Uninsured drivers affect our premiums
The government estimates that up to 1.4 million drivers on Britain's roads are uninsured, yet only around 242,000 offenders are convicted every year. As a result, every insured motorist pays an average £30 each year within their premiums to cover crashes involving uninsured and untraced drivers, while the figures also suggest that uninsured and untraced drivers kill 160 people and injure 23,000 every year.
According to the Department of Transport, a new system to tackle uninsured driving moved a step closer today as Road Safety Minister Mike Penning laid the final regulations in Parliament. Under Continuous Insurance Enforcement it will be an offence to keep an uninsured vehicle, rather than just to drive when uninsured, and the new regulations will allow the DVLA to take action against those who ignore warnings to get their vehicle insured.
Under the new system the DVLA will work in partnership with the Motor Insurers' Bureau to identify uninsured vehicles. Motorists will receive a letter telling them that their vehicle appears to be uninsured and warning them that they will be fined unless they take action. If the keeper fails to insure the vehicle they will be given a £100 fine.
If the vehicle remains uninsured - regardless of whether the fine is paid - it could then be clamped, seized and destroyed. The regulations laid in Parliament today would give the DVLA the powers to take this action.
The vehicle will only be released when the keeper provides evidence that the registered keeper is no longer committing an offence of having no insurance and the person proposing to drive the vehicle away is insured to do so. Vehicles with a valid Statutory Off Road Notice (SORN) will not be required to be insured.
It is planned for the first insurance advisory letters (which warn individuals that they appear to be uninsured) to be sent at the end of June following a publicity campaign to raise awareness of the CIE scheme.
It all sounds very impressive, but here at PH HQ we do wonder how many uninsured drivers have actually bothered to register their details with the DVLA in the first place...
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