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 Post subject: Unlicenced drivers!
PostPosted: Sat Sep 27, 2008 09:29 
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Unlicensed drivers.

We are told that

1) Unlicensed /unregistered / uninsured drivers are all dangerous criminals who are in the habit of driving wreckelssly because they believe that they can get away with it.

2) We are also told that drivers in these categories make up (what is the claim now) 10-15% (or is it more??) of the vehicles on the road.

(And that, for our safety and protection (of course :roll: ) ever more intrusive surveillance/database technology and rules must be applied to tackle this “menace”.)

Am I the only one who sees a certain inconsistency in these claims??

Surely if 10-15% of drivers were in the habit of driving wrecklessly because they felt they could escape the consequences, the streets would be red with the blood of hit and run victims, yet this is not the case.

Is this perhaps because, for the most part, #1 is simply not true!

Consider this possibility.

In much the same way as with the way drink driving statistics are misrepresented, the fact that a significant proportion of accidents involve unregistered drivers behaving wrecklessly is used to support the fallacious argument that unregistered drivers habitually behave in a wreckless manner.

(Accident statistics can only apply to those who have accidents. They say nothing (and CAN say nothing) about the vastly greater number of people who do not! Drunk or sober, Licenced or unlicenced!)

In fact I suspect the truth is quite the opposite.

I suspect that the vast majority of unregistered drivers actually drive rather conservatively. Their motivation is not to get a free ticket to use the highway as a racetrack Their motivation is anonymity (Possibly combined with a bit of rebellious civil disobedience)

If you wish anonymity you do not draw attention to yourself by driving in an extravagant manner.

I suspect that The bulk of unregistered drivers are not the chav boy (and girl) racers that the government wishes us to believe they are. Rather I suspect that They are ordinary people who have either fallen foul of “Totting up” (Or wish to avoid falling foul of same) and yet still need to work and support their families or are people who are attempting to avoid “congestion” taxes. (Some may also be subject to DD bans, however the argument still applies. Most people in this category will still be trying quite hard, to keep their heads down They are unlikely to wish to draw attention to themselves, either by bad driving or persisting in drink driving)

I don’t actually see specifically avoiding VED as a big issue for now either, though if the rises in the pipeline come to fruition it may well is in the future!

As for avoiding insurance, again I suspect this is as an unfortunate consequence of desiring anonymity. Were there a way of providing “Swiss Numbered” motor insurance (IYSWIM) that didnt compromise the anonymity objective, I would not be at all surprised if many “unregistered” drivers would take advantage of it.

How would I deal with unregistered drivers?

Well, I would remove the conditions that motivate people to do it in the first place.

1) Adopt the NZ model for motor insurance.
2) Scrap VED (or reduce it to “administrative” cost only, say £10) use a fuel based system of taxation instead (assuming that you need to anyway!).#
3) Scrap automated enforcement.
4) Make driving a integral part of secondary education (So even if the young tearaways don’t have the paperwork, they still have had the benefit of some formal training. Which would do a lot more for road safety than any amount of APNR and high speed police pursuits of paperwork dodgers)

# I would actually prefer to replace the “Tax” disk with an MOT one if you get my meaning. The two could effectively be combined, possibly with a tax element added to the MOT fee if you really wanted to!

But I guess that those in high places would find the idea of reducing lawlessness by reducing the number of laws a bit too radical!

Those further down the legal food chain whose livelihoods rely on a constant supply of laws and lawlessness even more so!

Ho Humm!

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 Post subject: Re: Unlicenced drivers!
PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 11:31 
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Interesting ideas, you have to ask yourself though, what benefit does the government get?

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 Post subject: Re: Unlicenced drivers!
PostPosted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 17:11 
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Nice post which covers only the tip of an ever growing iceberg.

Consider this scenario: you find on your way to work early one morning, that the limit on your well used roads has been reduced by 10mph. Used to travelling at your normal 38mph, you inadvertently collect six points.

You're a young fellow with a wife and a couple of sprogs to feed, rent/mortgage to pay and now find you've lost your job for reasons of transport difficulties. Ask yourself this question: Would I risk the penalties for driving whilst disqualified or attempt to preserve my job, home and family? Patently, there are many who feel that the penalty does not fit the crime and conduct themselves in this manner. Were I a twenty-something year old with those family responsibilities, I think I too would be tempted to resign from a society which seeks to destroy what little freedoms we now have.


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 Post subject: Re: Unlicenced drivers!
PostPosted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 21:53 
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Personally, I went the other way with it- I assumed that the 10% figure is derived by 10% of those involved in road accidents being unlicensed, banned, uninsured etc and the 10% taken to be representative, wheras in reality we know that banned and unlicenced people are probably more likely to have a prang, and accidents involving the uninsured are more likely to come to the attention of plod and thus be recorded.

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 Post subject: Re: Unlicenced drivers!
PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2010 15:42 
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Could this be another figure plucked out of the stats bag? .
Then again,could this swing to "persuading " us that although we have a smaller police force ,all this modern technology makes them more efficient .( Missing out the bit about in camera locations).

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