Hi.

The government tells us that to drive a car on a public road, we MUST have insurance. Fair enough, but I reckon they should offer the most basic RTA (road traffic act) insurance themselves, leaving the frills up to the insurance companies. Most people want TPFT as a minimum, so the insurance companies wouldn't be hit too hard.

Also, as it's the driver that's insured and he/she can only drive one car at a time, car insurance should automatically cover any car owned by the insured. Premium to be based on the car with the highest value/insurance group. This would encourage people to have two+ cars; one low mpg for when they need maximum load carrying; one high mpg for tootling round town. Of course each car should have it's own MOT, but the car Excise license (again priced on the highest rated vehicle) should be transferable to any car owned by the driver. This could have created a tangled mess in the old days, but as the U.K. has the highest ratio of population to surveillance cameras of any country in the world, I don't see that policing the above would create any problems.

What do you all think?

PLUS, even if I do get my license back I think XM ownership will have to go on the back burner for a year or so. I've a daughter who will turn 17 this June. Cost of insuring me (full license, maximum NC bonus) on a Diesel XM Estate, around £200 TPFT. Add my daughter on a provisional license and the premium jumps to £2200. Substitute a 1.2 litre 3 door Ford Escort of about the same age as the XM, and insurance for us both drops to £300 TPFT or £450 comprehensive. Is this not a rip off; an encouragment to drive without insurance? I am not advocating this for one moment, but I can see why young drivers are tempted to break the law.........

Taking that to its logical conclusion, add the basic insurance and the road fund licence costs onto the fuel tax, that way everyone would be automatically covered.

But then the tearaway who has accident after accident would have no sanction applied to him.

Certainly I can't see any reason why road fund licence shouldn't be included in fuel tax. Yes I can, there would be no way to check if a car had an MoT certificate.

Derek

Hi , It would be simple enough to do the same as France, with a sticker on the screen with the MOT expiry date on . Applied at the time of the inspection by the tester.
Carl G

MOT and tax details are all on a computer database now with number plate recognition camera's everywhere the tax disc is nearly obsolete surely, i think the road tax being paid with fuel is a great idea Derek, Doris who does 1k a year in her range rover produces less emmisions and uses the roads far less than someone in a Prius doing 15k a year, but at the moment pays treble the R/tax

D

I would certainly agree with the driver being insured rather than the car, as you say, you can't drive two cars at once. I have only two XM insurances which means one always has to be off the road, my son insures the red one (as he drives it). The only problem with that would be that all the cars are not covered for accident damage, fire or theft unless you were driving them, that seems to be how the extended cover for driving a car not belonging to you works, but as XMs at the moment aren't worth anything and are hardly likely to get stolen, I suppose that wouldn't matter to much.

Peter.N.

The problem with insurance being based on the driver is that every 17yr old in the land would be out trying to climb trees and lamposts in Impreza's, evo's and the like, where as now all they can afford to insure is small engined F/F's mostly which are easy to handle.
Good idea for the more adult members of society though.

D

Dean's point about the near redundancy of the tax disk is very valid but no one has mentioned that the MOT certificate is already redundant. Note 1 on the rear of an MOT certificate now tells you that it is a simply a certificate to confirm that you cars MOT test details have been recorded on VOSA's database of MOT test results. There are other parallel databases for Road Tax and Motor Vehicle Insurance (vehicle registration and named drivers). These databases are being progressively integrated into a single entity to give the ability to make on line checks about any vehicle from its registration number. It may be the traffic police that initially operate this system but do not expect it to stay that way. The cameras will do automatic checks eventually covering not just motorways but also A and B class roads. Then in built up areas there will be bonus attention from your friendly traffic wardens who will be able to check on line to see if they can send your pride and joy to the crusher simply because someone at Swansea pressed the wrong key or your tax reminded form scanned as a minor barcode error.
Their brief will be simple. If a database irregularity shows then check that there is a registered owner with a valid address that can be billed for the collection and crushing.

John

Here we have a Vehicle Test Certificate which must be displayed on the windscreen like tax.
Far from moving away from archiac, paper based methods, they recently made moves to make non-display of the certificate an offence, even if the car has a perfectly valid test.

I've been followed for miles by cops who no doubt radioed in or ANPR checked the car's and my details while they were sat behind me, but who still insist on checking the documents in the windscreen when they finally stop you...

Ciarán