John Williamson wrote:
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

The whole things has become a vicious circle: the more uninsured
drivers there are, the more the premiums go up, and the more the
temptation is there not to insure. Because MOT and car tax is also
expensive, and the tax depends on insurance and MOT, ipso facto there
is no incentive to license either, and without that no incentive to
get an MOT.

In short the cost benefit is between paying about £500 quid to
legalise a motah, or paying nothing and taking the risk. Since a very
decent car can be obtained without paperwork for less than £200, or
stolen for nothing, people who simply fail to register at and insure
can be up to £7-800* a year in pocket AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT CAUGHT.

If they are involved in an accident, with luck, just walk away. The
car is probably not traceable to the perp anyway.

I used to know people to whom such practice is the norm. The car
breaks down. Leave it, call a mate on a mobile phone, get picked up,
another mate knows of a car..no tax or MOT, give him a bull****
address for his forms, drive off in car, run till it breaks down,
repeat ad infinitum.

Drive carefully and not at night where police are likely to be on the
lookout. Ge way with it.

Also, inceasingly, stay away from motorways and town centres, where they
have ANPR cameras turned on and connected direct to DVLA. They might not
have your right address, but enough pictures and failed tickets could
trigger an alert to stop the vehicle next time it's seen by a patrol.

And the 100% guaranteed method to make sure that *all* drivers are
insured, no matter what they're driving?

Add a percentage to the cost of fuel, and set up an insurance scheme of
last resort, paid for by the extra fuel cost. Can't be dodged, and it's
vaguely proportional to the risk, as thirsty vehicles, which tend to be
more dangerous to others per mile, use more fuel per mile. Unless you
steal the fuel, there's no way to dodge paying the premium. Except that
if you steal the fuel, the premium's already been paid, unless you steal
it from the refinery. It'd only take a decent actuary a few minutes to
work out the figures.

Too easy? It works (Not terribly well, due to other administrative
problems, but it works) in South Africa, and as long as I've got a valid
licence, I can borrow any car there and *know* I'm insured to drive it.
Heck, personal injury to others is covered even if I steal the car,
though the government would no doubt find a way to make me pay if I were
caught.


Indeed. And as this country is more and more resembling south africa,
its probably a good place to copy.

(if you map township, to e.g. Hackney and homeland, to e.g. Scotland).

You can buy optional insurance in addition to the basic, governent
stuff, and most people with decent cars and all those in a commercial
setting do.


Exactly. In the old days you hard third party, or third party fire and
theft, and that was cheap. If you bent the car, you paid to get it fixeds.

Nowadays its expensive, because people know that if they back into you
at a filling station, and claim you drove into them, and they have got
whiplash and cant work, the courts will award them ten times the write
off value of the car they drive into you with.