Now due to increasing premiums and the current economic climate the estimated number of uninsured drivers is on the increase, so new insurance regulations come in to force at the end of June 2011.
In future all vehicles will be cross matched between the Central Vehicle Database and the Motor Insurance Database. Any a vehicle that is not registered off road with a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notice) will automatically trigger a prosecution.
If a vehicle does not have insurance, the registered keeper could:
- receive a fixed penalty of £100
- have their vehicle wheel-clamped, impounded, or destroyed
- face a court prosecution, with a possible maximum fine of £1000
If your car insurance runs out and you haven't arranged for a SORN or new cover, you will automatically be prosecuted. You may even find that your car has been clamped or impounded before you get home.
You have been warned!
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11 comments:
About time! Let's hope it helps to reduce premiums for the rest of us who DO stay legal and buy insurance (however, let's face it, that's never going to happen!)
Another immoral law, designed to criminalise honest people.
Sadly many decent people support this kind of law, simply because they don't understand. They think more laws reduces crime, whereas more laws increases crime - obvious once you realise that 'crime' = 'breaking the law', so more laws = more crimes.
In reality, this insurance law means that if the government (i.e. the Post Office) fails to deliver your SORN to the government (i.e. the DVLA) on time, the government (i.e. the police) can fine you or steal your car.
Why post it? Do it online or by phone direct to DVLA.
If you phone the DVLA and they get your details wrong (they sometimes do) you're still in chokey.
If your car is off the road and you aren't using it, why should Big Brother park his tanks on your lawn?
'An estimated 1.4 million drivers are flouting the law by driving without insurance. This is a serious offence and results in accidents that cause about 160 deaths each year - and more than 23,000 people are injured by uninsured drivers. It also adds around £30 per year to honest drivers' motor insurance policies.
If the new law helps reduce this, then I for one are happy for "Big Brother park his tanks on my lawn"
The 1.4 million figure was made up. The police didn't count 1.4m uninsured cars driving past - if they had, these people would have been prosecuted.
A few years ago the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said 38 percent of motorcyclists were dodging road tax. This figure has been revised to 6.5%. You can't trust government figures - they are tools to persuade well-meaning but somewhat gullible people to support the government's view.
The easy way to cut insurance premiums is to remove insurance premium tax, especially as cheaper insurance should reduce the number of uninsured drivers.
Driving without insurance does not result in accidents that cause 160 deaths a year. Accidents are caused by bad driving, not by being uninsured. Would any driver decide "I'm not insured so I'll just pop out and cause a fatal accident"?
Irrespective of whether or not non-insured drivers cause accidents (I agree, there’s unlikely to be a direct link though one might speculate that the kind of people irresponsible enough not to bother with insurance are also likely to be those who are irresponsible about other aspects of motoring – e.g. road-worthiness) or the number of such drivers . . . it has been and is an offence not to have insurance and I agree with the first post – this reform is long-overdue.
This new law is not about crime as such. It just makes law-abiding people tell the govermment that they are doing something legal - not using their uninsured car.
It is an understandable (but serious) mistake to conflate this issue with the separate issue of driving a car on the road without insurance. This was already illegal, so no new law was needed.
I think you’ve missed the point somewhat! It has long been the case that at the time of the annual tax disc renewal the registered keeper had either to re-tax or else make a SORN. There was a link to the insurance database but only in you re-taxed. The fact of the matter is that there is a significant number of people driving without tax, MOT and insurance – simply because there was no PROACTIVE link between the DVLA (with tax and SORN records) and the insurance database. You are simply plain wrong to state that this is about people having to “tell the government that they are doing something legal - not using their uninsured car”. It was (and is) ILLEGAL to own an uninsured car unless you had made a SORN.
The requirement to declare SORN if your uninsured car is NOT on the road is a new law, as WR15 highlighted.
It was - and still is - legal to NOT use an uninsured. The new law does not affect this, it merely introduces a new law requiring the keeper to tell the government that he is obeying the law.
We've had SORN for untaxed vehicles for some time, but that is also a faulty law; a law that is self-serving, rather than a public benefit.
If people have to notify the government when we do something legal (e.g. NOT using an uninsured car) but don't have to notify them if we do something illegal (e.g. use an uninsured car on the road) it is clear that the law is bearing down on the innocent, which is the exact opposite of what laws should do.
The concept that a person can be fined for failing to tell the government that they were obeying the law is morally repugnant.
What civil liberties are we left with, if even our right to OBEY the law, without having to report our obedience to the authorities, is removed?
Last year they got six million tax bills wrong - you really can't trust the government with numbers or with civil liberties - hence magna carta!
“The concept that a person can be fined for failing to tell the government that they were obeying the law is morally repugnant” . . . generally speaking this must be right though there are many other examples in English law where this is the case. However, semantics and hair-splitting apart, everyone knows that the intention here to stop people driving without insurance. Those of us who do insure our vehicles meet the consequential costs of this behaviour. I find that morally repugnant too and I’m confident that that is a view shared by the vast majority of law-abiding motorists..
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