Are you one in all the one in twenty motorists who regularly drive without insurance? You’d better be careful – your automotive might be heading for the crusher and shipped off to the world’s biggest scrap smelter in China!
New powers currently allow the police to seize, impound and crush any automotive found moving around without insurance. A pilot scheme was introduced in Durham last spring. Since then, police have impounded more than one,200 cars. Of those around half have been crushed into cubes and packed off for smelting.
Operation Takeaway as the pilot scheme was known, has been such a massive success, that police forces throughout the UK are enthusiastically sprucing up their tow trucks. The theme is now supported by a brand new national police database that is supported by the insurance industry. It permits the police to test the insurance status of each automotive within the UK while they’re sitting in their patrol car.
Currently if you’re caught red handed while not car insurance you’re forced at hand your keys to the police at the roadside. There aren’t any exceptions – this is applicable to everybody; it does not matter if it’s simply a forgetful mistake or conscious driving while not insurance.
Then you may have to get your skates on! You’ve got just fourteen days to produce a legitimate insurance policy to the police and collect your car. And different costs mount up. Before you’ll be able to collect your automobile, you have to pay the value of kerbside recovery (around £one zero five) and the cost of secure storage – and that could simply quantity to £15 a day. Thus, if you allow collecting your automobile to the 14th day, you may be in for a bill for £315.
And if you do not reclaim your car, off to the crusher it goes!
Throughout the pilot scheme, the cost of crushing the cars was partly funded by Direct Line. They need estimated that Operation Takeaway prevented up to 2,000 accidents. And many of the cars impounded by the police were found to be un-roadworthy.
A police spokesman said, “ Uninsured drivers are typically guilty of the many other offences. Like having neither driving licence nor MOT certificate. We are doing everything in our power to urge these dangerous and illegal drivers off our roads”.
Indeed, uninsured drivers are a lot of larger problem than several folks would expect. The Department of Transport recently reported that 1 in twenty motorists frequently drive while not insurance. Furthermore, research from the Association of British Insurers discovered that uninsured drivers are amongst the most dangerous on the roads. On average they cause one accident each six months and are 3 times more possible to be convicted of driving while not due care and attention.
And who pays for those uninsured accidents? We do! The typical automotive insurance premium is loaded by £30 to cover the cost of damage caused by uninsured motorists. Across the UK that adds up to an further £five hundred million paid out every year by the law-abiding motorists!
But that’s not the end of our money pain. If an uninsured vehicle collides into your automotive, it’s still recorded as a “fault claim” on your policy. This suggests you’ll have to pay the surplus when your automobile is repaired and unless you’ve got got Claims Protection on your policy, your no-claims bonus can take a knocking. Over a 2-year period, the reduction in your no claims bonus may easily value £275 in higher premiums.
The move to require cars off the road and crush them has been warmly welcomed by the Association of British Insurers. The ABI has long criticised the leniency of punishment handed out by the courts to uninsured motorists but they still want more durable penalties. Offenders are typically fined simply £a hundred and fifty to £two hundred – with time to pay – and this can be abundant less than the common automobile insurance premium. Surely this cannot be true justice! Read more other FREE articles about cheap individual health insurance, cheap individual health insurance and cheap individual health insurance