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
) 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!