There is a proposal being put today for the introduction of a visible sign that the vehicle is insured - similar to the 'Tax Disc'.
There are an estimated 1,250,000 drivers in the UK without insurance.
Slightly related, for those who've been here on a.f.l for some time and can remember my posting about the driver of a brand new VW Beetle ripping the back to shreds on my S3 tow hitch in the B&Q car park...
It later turned out that the car was a 'pressie from daddy', and the girl couldn't afford to insure it - so was driving it illegally... (no damage to my tow hitch, though...)
I think thats a realy good idea, aslong as they dont use it as justification to charge us more. Makes a change for the govenrment to think about doing something that i actually agree with - so it'll never happen! :)
I'd propose that one disk is used... it shows that the vehicle has a current MOT and is issued by the MOT station once they have had sight of a insurance policy that covers the driver/s to drive the vehicle given that not all cars have individual policies... some are covered on fleet policies or driven on third party only.
I'd bin the excise licence disc and put the duty on Fuel instead so us big vehicle owners pay fair rates for road wear, but, more importantly that the tax dodging benifit claiming arses that don't bother getting jobs and screw the system and incidentally everyone elses pay packets actually have to pay road tax.
Besides I can then justify running a few more classics in the fleet cos I only run one at a time....I think...
:-)
Lee D
-- ________________________________
formatting link
Just a little hobby site about Landies :-) ________________________________
They did bin the road tax and put it on petrol , only problem was that they put up petrol to cover the cost of no road tax and then forgot and kept the road tax as well :o) easy money.:o)
Still got the problem of the overlap though - get the MOT when you have 1 day left on the insurance and then don't renew. And what about cars under 3 years old that don't have MoT's (which I think should be revoked BTW)?
AFAIK you cannot have a car on the road that isn't covered by an insurance policy naming that vehicle. Even driven third party, the vehicle itself must have an insurance policy against it in someone's name otherwise at present you couldn't tax it.
Fleets are not difficult - even fleet insurers want to know vehicle details otherwise the customers would insure 1 vehicle comprehensively and the other 500 TPFT and just put forward whichever car got crashed under the fully compo policy.
Which, incidentally, you used to be able to do with HP Laserjets on extended warranties, because they couldn't track them individually. Buy 250 printers and one extended warranty - hey presto! Not sure it still applies...
SG: Only problem with MOT stations issuing a disk is that you could easily knock up a fake policy document on a computer in a couple of hours. If the disk is issued by the insurance companies then it could be made more secure - use of holograms, etc.
At first it sounds good - everyone will be paying duty whenever they use the vehicle. Deeper thought gives a lot of problems though. HGVs - what do they pay then? They cause the most damage to the roads, and are currently taxed accordingly. Will car diesel be cheaper than HGV diesel,or will HGVs have a surcharge at the pump. Mopeds/motorbikes - do they have to pay the same as cars then? They are the most environmentally friendly of powered transports,and as such should be encoraged yet they will have a fuel duty the same as (eg) a 2 tonne Rolls Royce or LR. I know larger vehicles use more fuel,so will be paying more than a moped, but it seems to me that this would be a very poorly aimed Duty, when the present Road Tax could be enforced so much better - it seems they are starting to 'get' a lot more offenders recently by the use of the DVLA computers to target any untaxed vehicles.Soon they should be efficient enough to report the majority of offenders,and so negating a need for a new duty. Alan.
I'd love to know where this fallacy has come from, HGV's do most of their milage on Motorways, which are built for them, and also if you look at the point loading of a triple-triple artic compared to the average 4x4 you will be surprised!
You are joking? There's hardly anything in the inside lane but trucks. And the grooves are too wide for the Discovery, so they certainly aren't made by repmobiles.
Hmm. I suspect any HGV would be better off with VED on fuel, look at the current taxations:
Cars: £55 to £165 Buses: £165 to £500 Rigid HGV, 7.5t to 44t: £165 to £1200 Trailer Duty, 4-12t, 12t+: £165 or £230 Artic HGV, 25t to 44t: £165 to £1850
I expect putting the duty on fuel would probably be preferable, as they can always fill up on the continent.
On or around Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:07:47 -0000, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:
all that sounds nice and fair, 'til you get to the point where you *have* to drive a 15-mile journey to get to the shops.
there's enough sodding tax on the fuel already for the bloody government to waste on blowing up saddam and his ilk.
even on LPG (which is set to rise any minute...) there's 4.5p per litre PLUS VAT.
on petrol and diesel yer paying about 45p PLUS VAT per litre in tax. and does all that lovely moolah get spent on transport?
I did some rough calculations a bit back about how much fuel is used in cars in this country:
assume 20 million cars (about 1 per 3 people) assume 10% usage, 24 hours a day on average, that's 2 million cars assume 20 mph and 20 mpg average, nationwide.
that's 48 million miles per day, using 2.4 million gallons of fuel.
OK, maybe the figures aren't accurate, but I don't suggest they are. Suppose the figure is only a million gallons a day, noting that I'm not counting lorries or buses in this...
say 5 million litres a day, with of the order of 50p/litre in duty and tax, means an income to the treasury of £2.5 million PER DAY, 900-odd million per year.
I welcome any stats that might refine that BTW.
But note that heavy trucks typically average about 8 mpg and do a lot more miles in a year than most cars, although there are less of 'em than cars, they also tend to spend a lot less time idle.
Contact area proportional to diameter & width - say HGV super singles
40% wider and taller ~ twice contact area.
Landrover 2.5 tonnes/4 wheels = 0.6 tonnes/wheel
End result loading on HGV ~ 3 times loading on landrover wheel/unit area.
Try driving an HGV over a field and you will see this in practice!
If you need more evidence consider tyre pressures HGV ~ 120psi LR
35psi. More like a 4:1 ratio but in the same ballpark.
HGV suspension, especially steel based is also much harder on the road as it is less complient. The last I heard HGVs do far more damage pro rata than their additional contribution to road tax.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.