Are you one of the one in twenty people who drive without insurance most of the time? You should be careful, because your car could be going to be crushed and sent to China, which has the world's largest scrap smelter.
Police now have the power to seize, impound, and crush any uninsured car they find on the road. Last spring, a pilot programme started in Durham. Since then, police have taken more than 1,200 cars away from their owners. About half of those have been broken into cubes...
Are you one of the one in twenty people who drive without insurance most of the time? You should be careful, because your car could be going to be crushed and sent to China, which has the world's largest scrap smelter.
Police now have the power to seize, impound, and crush any uninsured car they find on the road. Last spring, a pilot programme started in Durham. Since then, police have taken more than 1,200 cars away from their owners. About half of those have been crushed into cubes and sent to a smelter.
The pilot programme, which was called "Operation Takeaway," was such a big success that police forces all over the UK are eagerly cleaning their tow trucks. A new national police database that is backed by the insurance industry is now helping the plan. It gives the police the ability to check the insurance status of every car in the UK from their patrol car.
Now, if you are caught without car insurance, you have to give your keys to the police at the side of the road. There are no exceptions; this rule applies to everyone, whether it was an accident or a deliberate choice to drive without insurance.
Then you'll have to start moving! You only have 14 days to show the police that you have insurance and get your car back. And there are more costs. Before you can get your car back, you have to pay for kerbside recovery (which costs about GBP105) and secure storage, which could easily cost GBP15 a day. So, if you don't get your car back until the 14th day, you could be charged GBP315.
And if you don't come get your car, it will be crushed.
During the pilot project, Direct Line helped pay for some of the cost of crushing the cars. They think that Operation Takeaway stopped as many as 2,000 accidents from happening. And the police found that many of the cars they took were not safe to drive.
A police spokesman said, "People who drive without insurance often break many other laws as well. Like not having a licence to drive or a MOT certificate. We're doing everything we can to get these illegal and dangerous drivers off the roads ".
In fact, people who drive without insurance are a much bigger problem than many of us think. The Department of Transport recently said that one in every twenty drivers often drives without insurance. Also, research by the Association of British Insurers found that drivers without insurance are some of the most dangerous on the roads. On average, they cause one accident every six months and are three times more likely to be found guilty of driving without paying attention.
And who pays for the accidents that don't have insurance? We do! The cost of damage caused by people who don't have insurance is added to the average car insurance premium by GBP30. All of this costs law-abiding drivers in the UK an extra GBP500 million every year.
But our financial troubles aren't over yet. If an uninsured car hits yours, it will still show up on your policy as a "fault claim." This means you'll have to pay the deductible when your car is fixed, and if you don't have Claims Protection on your policy, your no-claims bonus will take a hit. Your premiums could go up by as much as GBP275 over two years if your no-claims bonus goes down.
The Association of British Insurers is very happy about the plan to take cars off the road and crush them. The ABI has long complained that the courts are too easy on drivers who don't have insurance, but they still want tougher penalties. Offenders usually get a fine of between GBP150 and GBP200, which they can pay over time. This is much less than the average cost of car insurance. This can't be true justice, right?
