Safe Speed Forums

Who is winding up who, BW? I think the number of posts against your name speak for themselves....

Or is it perhaps that you are looking for a snide way to justify your incoherent soapboxing that you obviously enjoy so??

PaulF is right - we are feeding you, not the other way around. You have danced more tricks in response to us..

I would merely say that this demonstrates beautifully the need for us not to take ourselves too seriously.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Yes … but more news about my original post, satellite tracking yesterday. Now that it's Friday and we've softened up a bit, I will try a more reasonable appraoch, avoiding ad hominem flare ups!

GatsoBait, if I hadn’t been so distracted dealing with this ‘hypocrisy’ sideline, I’d have had time to get back to you by now. Sorry about that.

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I stole this .sig

No worries. The meter wasn't running. I think I've worked out one thing you meant that I wasn't clear on, but I'll keep shtum till you've replied in case I'm still on the wrong wavelength.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The really sad thing about Mr Darling's proposals is that the justification of them is based on supposition.

Why the rush to introduce this system sooner rather than later?? Could it be because traffic isn't going to rise at the linear rates the doomsayers are predicting?

We currently have around 25 million registered vehicles in the UK, which matches pretty much the number of qualified drivers. How is traffic supposed to keep rising then?? Will individuals go and buy extra cars and attempt to pilot both of them at the same time??

This ability to regulate and increase at will revenue from private vehicle travel has to be introduced sooner rather later because otherwise the public will very quickly realise it has no real purpose other than controlling and monitoring the movement of the populace.

As Blair said during the effective fuel protests: "If we reduce the motoring taxes how will we pay for the schools and hospitals?". If we increasingly move towards carbon neutral fuels, then even the very dodgy argument about global warming cannot be used to justify fuel duty, so they have to have an alternative mechasim for getting in the money...

What nobody has yet explained (beyond the headline statement) is how exactly it will "reduce congestion".

I think Mr. Darling is the politician least likely to say anything sensible on any subject. And that's saying something! Unfortunately this idiot is responsible for transport which is such an important aspect of modern life.

Is this post ad hominem?

No it isn't, because you are criticising Mr Darling for what he does, rather than what he is, which would be the hallmark of an ad hominem attack...

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

OK chaps, this is my view on road pricing:

In principle, I would agree something has to be done about the most congested roads and areas in the country. But that said and acknowledged, the problem with the Govt's views is that the technology they want to introduce will track EVERY car EVERYWHERE. This should be a no-no for at least 2 reasons

1 Congestion charging isn't necessary at any time of the day on more than 98% of Britain's roads

2 Most importantly, the technology will be abused if it can be abused: We know this about their cameras now - but how d'you fancy being done for technically speeding between say 5 or 6 junctions on a journey from Leeds to London?? (and by implication totted up and banned)? These people could prove that a vehicle must have exceeded the speed limit by small fractions between any two points.... Moreso, the 'thought-police' could be studying us and our movements for all sorts of reasons

With regard to Congestion Charging on certain routes at certain times, well, I might be pursueded if technology along the lines used in Central London were introduced on gantries above heavily congested roads in minimal fashion.

But all of this COULD come in time.

What I would like to see NOW, what could be introduced in days or weeks rather than years or decades (and cost all of us fortunes and risking our civil liberties at the same time) would be the abolition of Road Tax (the 'tax-disk') and the whole lot put on Petrol Duty.

I would also put the cost of minimal 3rd party insurance on Petrol Duty from today or tomorrow too.

Our "congestion causing" cars don't work without Petrol / Diesel / LPG (or some other sort of fuel). If the car is not used, the motorist pays nothing. When the car is used, the motorist pays - the more he uses, the more he pays. If he chooses to drive something that only does 10 mp gallon rather than 10 MP Litre, he will voluntarily pay 4.3 times as much for each yard he drives!!!!!

They tell us 1 in 20 of us has no insurance. Bad for the other 19, every cyclist & pedestrian. Insurance put on fuel is INAVOIDABLE. It would then be up to each of us if we wanted to pay a premium for fire cover, theft cover or 'comprehensive' cover... It would not waste the Police's time with '7 day wonders', etc. It would also stop insurance companies from taking the piss with regard to the premiums they want for something one needs.

Consider this: I had a motorcycle at 17. 1st car at 23. No accidents / endorsements on the bike in those 6 years before I got the 1st car. Full ncd on the bike by that time too. "Can I transfer all or part of my NCD to the car?" 'No.' "Why not?" 'Because it's a different type of vehicle.'. "So if I'd had accidents or endorsements for speeding / jumping red lights ON THE BIKE, you wouldn't load me?" 'Oh no, that's different'. "Why, they are DIFFERENT vehicles, aren't they????"

The tax disk element of the current setup (ie. the piece of paper with an expiry date) could be replaced by similar circular (or square) piece of paper such as a counterpart to an MOT test certificate, clearly displayed in the window. Remember, the authorities would know that every vehicle is insured and that 'use duty' had been paid through the petrol in its tank.


Anyway, that's my 10 bob's worth for now. Any others want to add / detract from what I've said?

By taxing the less well off so they can't drive anywhere !!

This whole idea is lunacy, and could well break the courts / police for good. Imagine the scenario...

Unless you have a coin operated car, the numbers of non-payment offences will be in the millions. So the courts get clogged up, we will spend our days running round arresting for non-payment, the prison service will need to buy Travelodge to fit them all in, and the idea of policing by consent will be finally eradicated.

Plus of course all those souls in favour of this scheme until they realise their number plate has been cloned a few dozen times...

And who calibrates the device? Part of the MOT test ? We can't even make the MOT test produce safe cars, let alone anything else...

But look on the bright side, the quality of Travelodge catering and hospitality would improve no end

Excellent post, PaulF.
I don't think that the insurance companies would like it, but I won't lose too much sleep over that , the pay-as-you-use principle via fuel prices is definitely the way to go.

This is indeed my biggest worry as well, I get the shudders thinking about this. Freedom of movement is so valuable. This sort of mass-monitoring policy is another frightening step in the creeping-1984-syndrome that some are trying to impose upon us all. Perhaps the motives of some of these people are well-intentioned, and most supporting this policy are probably naive. Unfortunately the effects would be dramatic, and very difficult to reverse. Too many people would then have a vested interest in the control-juggernaut.

When I first came to the Netherlands in the 80's, I was very proud of the freedoms and privacy that the UK system generally supported. The Dutch system, by comparison, seemed far more controlled, cross-referenced and monitored. Twenty years later the tables are turning, and the "nanny-state" seems to be getting the upper hand in my "Land of Hope and Glory".

This monitoring must be strongly opposed !

Use cheap 500 Mhz PC and put Fedora Linux on it with OpenOffice. If you can get it working once in the first place, it’ll never keel over on you.



One thing to consider is that these things would be sold on the basis of convenience, much like ‘direct debits’ at the bank, or credit cards. Sure, you can function with paper billing and cash, but it gets to be a pest. So it will come to pass that you can function without all this new, government backed technology (biometric ID cars, satellite networks etc.), but you may suffer inconveniences. For ID you will have to carry a bunch of paperwork around with you, and to pay road tolls, congestion charges etc, you’ll have to wait in line with other refusniks to pay cash. And as people zoom past the automatic RF monitors, the number of toll gates and places where you can buy your congestion charge will diminish.

I’m wavering about whether this stuff is desirable, but there is no doubt it will be proposed. Already, schemes for trucks operate in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.



If your stuff doesn’t check out when you pass an RF monitor, you’re a strong candidate to get pulled – you might as well have a flashing light on your car that says ‘I’m a twister’! That is the other basis for selling this stuff – to defeat criminal activity. It is surprising to think of how much crime involves cars. Crooks don’t use getaway busses and trains, and don’t haul loot around in sacks. Look how many cases use forensic evidence from mobile phones.



I would expect the system to be able to extend to having RF monitors at petrol stations, linked to the database backend. If your stuff doesn’t check out, you’ll have to pay cash, because your details would be forwarded. In any case, you’re a strong candidate to get pulled.



Yes. But while we are stuck on Starvation Island, I only want to pay into a system that is hard for others to exploit. If your stuff doesn’t check out at a toll station, you’ll have to join a queue of evaders and refusniks, and pay cash. If you blast through without paying, they’ll head you off.



I’m wavering – I value the freedom I have in this country to kick up a storm, and that could be mechanised away. On the other hand, as anyone who has spent a lot of time abroad will know, a large section of our society has forgotten how to live with each other properly, and systematisation might be the only way to make them pay their dues.



The current system doesn’t work – we have too many twisters without insurance and tax. To find them, the government will systematise.


We pay for a shared resource, only some of us aren’t paying our dues. The only way to find them is to ask them nicely or to systematically track them down.



It doesn’t allow for differentiating with times and routes; it only considers usage. That means you can’t use it for persuading people to opt for alternatives.



Satellite charging allows to persuade/coerce people to choose alterative routes. Side benefits that even I (with my simple mind) can dream up are broadband music, telling you whether there is parking at the far end, where the jams are, dynamic routing hints, warnings of speed limit violations, camera warnings (why not?) etc. But other verbs that came to mind are ‘control, report and automate’, which are sinister.

Did Orwell warn us about NewSpeak etc. in order to try to stop it? Or did he simply explain the way things would play out, whatever we do?

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I stole this .sig

Not the operative verb: "warn"...

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Yes - as a Brit, one can visit other European countries and form an opinion on why events of the mid-20th century happened where they did, but did not (or could not?) happen in the UK. It is hard to generalise about this, but it could be that disorder is a very good thing, and we Brits are very good at a type of disorder from which good things sometimes emerge. Odd, that is.

On the other hand, I think Mr Darling may have a point when he says that doing nothing about congestion is not an option, and I certainly don’t like having twisters zooming around the roads with no MOT, tax, insurance, or licence and what have you. How can we preserve our characteristic state of muddled charm, while putting road tax and insurance twisters on the bus? For once, I don’t know!

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I stole this .sig

I think partly the idea is that routes that are congested now at certain times will cost more to use at those times. If it costs more, people will use the route less, travel at a different time, or carry passengers to split the cost, work from home or elsewhere, or use the train or bus etc.

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I stole this .sig

Putting vehicle excise duty onto petrol would solve problem number 1, and a good solution to the other problems that complies with our "muddled charm" is to have quaint old boys in blue patrolling the roads and saying "Ere - I want a word with you!" to dodgy looking motorists, and weeding out the MoT / licence dodgers etc by using the standard of their driving / vehicles as a proxy by which to assess their legality.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

I'm resisting the temptation to go off on a long winded and profanity laden rant about Windows , but it's still pretty long winded so I'll split this in two parts to make it a bit easier to read.


Not actually what's on the drawing board though. AFAICT it's not going to be like Pay As You Go mobile phones. More like a country wide version of Melbourne's E-Tags where your account, credit card say, gets billed after your journey which was tracked via satellite, not roadside monitoring. Roadside monitoring would require too many vandal prone units by the road network put there at vast expense. C'mon, they can't take care of 5000 Gatsos without people necklacing them from time to time. You reckon roadside monitors out in the sticks would be safe? Not a prayer! As anti the whole idea as I am, I would concede that between roadside and satellite monitoring there's only one sensible choice. It'll be a long time before anyone is able to stick a tyre round a satellite and light it.


Any idea if the truck schemes you mention are (a) revenue neutral for the authorities there, and (b) cost the same for the truckers? In other words, are the truckers paying inflated rates to cover the implementation and running of the schemes while the actual tax revenue is unchanged?


I won't hold my breath about anything spectacular happening there. Roadside monitoring would be fairly watertight but the monitors will be destroyed regularly, leaving gaps in the system. Satellites will be bomb proof but will rely on the vehicles telling them where they've been, and possibly taking instructions via satellite. Break the link between vehicle and satellite and the satellites won't even know the car is there.


You've missed the point. Monitoring at petrol stations, beyond the usual CCTV, is unnecessary since only a tiny percentage of fuel duty is evaded by means of stealing the petrol. I am saying that fuel duty is an extremely efficient and effective means of collecting the tax. Low tech though it is, it suffers from none of the potential problems of the high tech solutions. No black boxes to disable, no signals to scamble or block, no sensitive and expensive electronics to bugger with or simply destroy. Plus it's already charging users per mile and to self adjusts to take account of the fuel efficency of the car and choice of route. It's been happily doing that for decades without a satellite or RF monitor in sight.


I tend to agree with the point about modern society, though historians might tell us that it's always been this way to some extent or another. Human condition, possibly? Anyhow, there is no need for a new system to make them pay their dues, assuming we're still talking specifically about road use. As I keep saying, the system is already there. It just needs some costs added to it which are currently easy to evade. Once that is done it will be all but impossible for the individual to avoid chipping in.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Part 2


The insurance and VED systems are breaking down, true. But that's mainly because they're fairly easy to evade (you just fail to pay, duh) and as people start to evade payment the costs immediately increase as they are shared around a smaller group, and before long a vicious circle develops.

So how to break the circle? Introducing a new system which attempts to price people of the roads will merely encourage greater numbers to evade payment and drive outside the law. To me that sounds like the spiral will just get tighter and faster. Alternatively, the cost of VED could be included in fuel duty for a fairly modest sum as there would naturally be some savings made in Swansea not having to chase tax dodgers anymore. I have no idea how much the VED system costs to run but issuing all those discs, keeping the databases up to date, sending out reminders, police costs in checking for non payers, etc... it must all mount up to quite a bit. In return for which the revenue is what? £12 or 15 bn or so? I say cut out the costs and make it evasion proof by including the tax in the price of fuel.

Similarly, the same could apply to insurance. The Aussies already do this for personal injury cover in their version of VED (and cleverly their "rego" sticker is also theft proof - I'm told it's bloody hard to get the thing off the windscreen at all, much less in good enough condition to re-use it). It's not a huge leap of the imagination to go one step further and simply include 3rd party damage and injury insurance in the cost of fuel. Again, this would probably be a fairly modest amount as eliminating uninsured drivers overnight would certainly produce cost savings. Now, as a more experienced driver with full NCD it would seem a little unfair that the 3rd party bit of my insurance would be no cheaper for me than for my sister, who is only a newly qualified driver. But personally I could live with that since I'd know that anyone who is going to run into me definitely has cover.

See? With little effort, minimal cost and no intrusive technology VED dodgers and uninsured drivers can easily be consigned to history. No need to "track 'em down or ask nicely" - the road taxes will all be paid in advance and be sloshing around in the tank. Fail to pay and your car stops working until you cough up. How could it get any easier? How could a technological solution be any better? It can't.

The only people likely to be unhappy is the floor of the DVLA with the P45s going round and the insurance industry. Hmmm, no actual downside then . Actually, I would feel sorry for the franchisees in sub Post Offices who rely on tax discs for a chunk of their turnover, but sub Post Offices are fast becoming extinct anyway and it's possible that VED is just prolonging the inevitable


(In fact, fuel duty is already so bloody high it's fair to ask if the govt could afford to do one or other right now without increasing the duty.)


Not so. Congestion carries its own cost in time penalties. I don't know anyone who wouldn't rather spend a portion of the morning commute tucked up in bed. The fact that they end up spending it on the road isn't a matter of choice, so satellite charging isn't going to change much there. And of course, rush hour driving effectively makes fuel duty relatively expensive per mile compared to using empty roads at a different time of day. I average about 28-29mpg, which works out to very roughly 12p or so per mile in fuel duty (very, very roughly since I'm using fairly rough numbers). Clearly I'm already paying four or five times as much duty per mile sitting in rush hour traffic than that average. Equally, on the rare occasions I find myself on an empty motorway cruising at a nice high and economical speed I'm probably paying a bit over half as much duty per mile. In addition I am penalised for driving a gas guzzler. Mrs Gatsobait and I pay fuel duty at the same rate at the pump, but since she has a more economical car she is rewarded by a slightly lower rate of duty per mile than me in the same situations.

As for your other suggestions, I say again, they are all in some way or another already provided for with the exception of the tracking, control and other similar functions that could be loosly bundled together under a term like "snooping". From my car I can get up to date traffic info from the radio or by yelling "Trafficline" in a silly voice at my mobile sitting in its cradle. I don't see that broadband music is a significant advantage over bog standard FM except in sound quality, but we have even that adequately covered with CD changers and MP3 compatible head units. Digital radios will be along soon if they're not here already, and only a couple of weeks ago Top Gear reviewed a small city car which had a socket on the dash to plug an iPod into.


The former I think. Right now I can't check it out of the library and see. I'm going through The Divine Comedy to see which particular circle of hell is reserved for mad politicians who'd rather spend a fortune on a piss poor but sexy high tech solution over an almost 100% effective low cost low tech solution that would do the job miles better.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

First of all Gatsobait I do agree with the majority of what you say, but I'll just play devils advocate a little.....

The method of tax collection in fuel duty is a good one, and your right - it couldn't get much simpler or more difficult to avoid. However, surely it was based on cars that did around 30mpg? Now a typical car on a commute can achieve 50-60mpg, effectivly allowing people to commute twice as far for the same money. So in order to get the balance right again, wouldn't fuel duty need to be increased a fair bit? But then people like me are still knocking around in petrol cars that don't quite achieve 60mpg....... I have no basis other then a bit of guess work and presumtion but I'm sure that this increase in mpg has encouraged people to live further from work. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know!

I don't know the answer, I was just throwing a counter argument in in order to iron out a rather very good proposal.