Safe Speed Forums

This is one of my hobby horses.

The Tax Disc and VED...A complete waste of time and money?

Discuss

There seem to be 2 reasons.

1) It proves you had an MOT and insurance on the day it started, that just leaves the other 364 days then!

2) Its tax to use (not pay for!) the roads.

However:-

with ANPR 1) becomes obsolete
And 2) is more than covered by fuel tax (pay as you go) After all a fill up on my Galaxy is approx £60, about £42 (I believe) is tax so after filling up 4 or 5 times (approx 2-3 months) I have paid the same tax

So I agree, its a complete waste of time, except that it also acts as an MOT reminder.

Ah so thats the point

_________________
Nick

I hate the tax disc and want it gone. The arguments in favour of VED are:

1) It's a tool to influence behaviour. Higher VED group vehicles are less attractive as purchases.

2) It's a quick document check.

3) It helps avoid accumulations of unwanted vehicles in public places.

4) It functions as a 'data check' for DVLA.

Anyone got any more before we take them to bits properly?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I could not agree more. The whole VED system is so full of holes that even the patches have holes. Here is a thread that I started some time ago about how the VED system couldn't cope with a perfectly reasonable case and because of the inability of the system to cope, my son could have been criminalised.

The Government's main excuse for continuing with VED was to ensure that everyone had tax and MOT. However, now that insurance and MOT databases are accessible to APNR and any plod who wants to "call it in" it is my opinion that VED is redundant and should be scrapped forthwith.

The other excuse the Government has is that the "sliding scale" means that those who pollute more pay more. However, that isn't so because someone who drives very high mileage in an "eco-friendly" [sic] car will pollute a lot more than someone who only drives a couple of thousand miles a year in a "gas-guzzler".

So, scrapping VED and putting a few pence (rough calculations suggest that 10p/l would bring in £165 from 10,000 miles per year at 30 mpg) makes a lot of sense.

_________________
Will

so having to spend an extra £50/year on VED is going to stop me buying a £50,000 gas guzzler?

Even if it was a cheap guzzler, the cost of VED pales into insignificance against the duty on the fuel for the average user (for now anyway)

You still need to have a vehicle registration system and a database of registered keepers. Scrapping VED entirely would arguably lead to there being even more holes in this.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

I couldn't agree more. It could be replaced with a digitally-signed
download that can be purchased on line and would reside in the car's
onboard system. It would be constantly scanned from the road-side, and
the vehicle halted if it's authenticity is suspect. That's the way it'll pan out
I expect – you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows!
So let’s get used to the idea - the tax disc will soon be a piece of history!

_________________
I stole this .sig

[quote="basingwerk

So let’s get used to the idea - the tax disc will soon be a piece of history![/quote]

The way justice/discretion and common sense has departed in all motoring offences??

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

If they seriously want to do that then they should add the cost at MOT time based on the results of the emissions test.

My GF has been modifying her 1990 200SX rather heavily in the time that she has had it. With the new engine map it now has it burns fuel far more efficiently, in order to get more power out.

The car doesn't have a catalytic converter, but it's just got an emissions result from the MOT that would have passed a catalytic converter test, yet she still pays gas guzzler tax.

I could buy a Prius, somehow shoehorn in a big American V8 and still pay band A tax for my eco friendly vehicle. (Plus I'd have lots of now-unused batteries for a big chav audio system)

By whom? If they can't patrol the streets looking for dangerous driver.....no wait..... you're right!

It'll make money.

Just automate the system & get more Gatsoesque devices to catch the cars without tax.... em, isn't that ANPR?

<<epiphany moment>> We live in the future...it's here now.

A digitally signed download of the tax disc that can be scanned at the roadside. That's a dumb idea. No wonder government IT projects always fail or go over budget.

Before I go any further, I'll state that I'm totally opposed to such a system, hoever here is how it should be done if it's going to work.

No need to store the tax disc, insurance or MOT info in the car itself. If you do that you're just asking for it to be faked as all encryption technologies will get broken eventually.

The only thing that should be stored on the car and broadcast to onboard cameras is the car's own unique ID. Nothing else at all.

The databases back at central government should have look-up tables of car IDs against MOT status and road tax status (I'll leave insurance alone, because there are so many ways to drive a car and be insured without there being a specific policy for that car)

You can then do a lookup, determine that the car has no tax and pull them over or issue an automatic fine or whatever.

Funnily enough, that's what ANPR does already.

A more interesting issue is whether it would be a good thing to have digitally signed RFID numberplates. I don't like the whole tracking thing that these would enable, but making numberplates harder to copy is possibly a good thing

I'm still in favour of the tax disc as the local chavs drive round our estate at 70 mph untaxed, uninsured, and unlicensed. The out of date tax disc is a dead giveaway when they park up. There's one parked up in the lay-by at the side of my house now, the tax runs out at the end of June, as soon as that happens I'm on the phone to the local council. ANPR is practicaly unheard of round our way so that doesn't help either.

There's already been a proof of concept of viruses spread via RFID. Although that was with supermarket products, the same concept applies to RFID and car tracking. Having a maliciously coded chip could seriously screw up the system ... but of course nobody's going to do that. What have they to gain? (except that the hacked system wouldn't be charging for road miles).

_________________
Will

What's the point though, if all the council do is post a fine to the registered keeper of that number plate, who is probably totally innocent?

In my area every point, the local authority will tow away untaxed cars parked on the public highway. They don't bother with the fine in the post rigmarole anymore.

By itself, of course. The system would initially cap the speed to 50 mph,
reducing it by 5 mph increments over time.

BTW: the funny idea comes from some coppers in Cheltenham who have
made a special bike that goes very slowly, no matter how hard you pedal!
They leave it in the city for a mug to steal, then they trott after them to
make the arrest - it would be great to electonically apply this idea to cars,
in the fullness of time.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Yeah, these computer thingies are just a fad! Joking aside, the Internet
(which you are using right now) started as a government IT project –
anyone remember ARPANET?



Yes - it’s a ‘digitally signed download’, not a ‘digitally signed download
of a tax disc’. The system would be all encompassing, include Tax, MOT,
Insurance, owner details etc. Eventually, even the current driver ID will go
in. As an architectural detail, the data could be centralised, in which case,
the ID is the key feature. The download would only have the ID in it, which
would be put in when the car is put on the road. It could also be
decentralised, reducing server loads. It’s a discussion point – we should
talk more about it, you seem to know what you are saying.




It is a step towards it, but the weakness with ANPR is the ease making of
false id plates.




Yeah, real-time, digital record keeping systems is the way it’s going, for
sure IMHO.

_________________
I stole this .sig

That would be utterly impossible for read-only devices, and digital signatures make it very hard to do for modifiable ones. There is plenty of scope for reliable solutions.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Very difficult for official read-only devices. However, the RFID POC virus showed that a maliciously formed ID could bomb the system. Don't forget that a malintent could craft their own tag - effectively presenting "user input" to the system. The reader is active, and the system that retrieves the tag data might be compromised by data that exploits a vulnerability. Humans (including IT experts) can make mistakes and might not think of everything WRT security. You only have to consider how many SQL-driven systems have been compromised this way. For example, what if the tag injected the equivalent of "DELETE FROM VehicleData", or "UPDATE TollCharges SET ChargeRate=ChargeRate/10"

_________________
Will