13,500 uninsured cars are seized
TRANSPORT: Calls have been made for uninsured drivers to receive harsher penalties after figures showed Yorkshire’s largest police force seized more than 13,500 vehicles in the last three years.
CALLS HAVE been made for uninsured drivers to receive harsher penalties after figures showed Yorkshire’s largest police force seized more than 13,500 vehicles in the last three years.
West Yorkshire Police took 4,125 cars, vans, motorcycles and heavy vehicles off the roads in 2014-15 – the highest figure for any force outside the Metropolitan Police.
The total number of uninsured vehicles seized in the last three years was 13,527, of which almost half were either sold at auction or crushed and sold for scrap, generating about £1.81 million for the force. Among the cars seized in the last three years were five Porsches, two Bentleys and more than 360 BMWs.
Those who are caught driving without the necessary cover face a fixed penalty of £300 and six points on their licence.
However, the number of people stopped by West Yorkshire Police for having no insurance has shown little sign of decline and motoring organisation the AA said the punishments are not severe enough to act as a deterrent.
Spokesman Ian Crowder said: “Uninsured drivers are typically young men, often unemployed, often with a string of motoring convictions and driving bans and so are uninsurable anyway.
“They are then stopped and the car confiscated. They then opt to go to court rather than pay a fixed penalty and the average fine meted out is less than £300, which is a scandal when the maximum available is £5,000.
“The fines are means tested, unlike a fixed penalty, and often the offender is permitted to pay by instalments. So they pay one instalment and then disappear and don’t pay the rest.
“It’s difficult to know what to do. Putting them in prisons isn’t necessarily going to help, but the sentencing often doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the crime and the AA thinks the penalties are insufficient.”
The AA said uninsured driving adds around £33 to every policy bought by insured drivers. Londoners are the worst affected, with annual premiums averaging £936 in some parts of the capital.
Bradford is the eighth most ex- pensive place in the country to insure a car, with average premiums of £661.
Drivers who have their cars seized by police can get them back if they can prove that they have the necessary documents and pay the police costs of removing and impounding them.
Temporary Chief Superintendent Pat Casserly, of West Yorkshire Police’s protective services, said: “Uninsured drivers are a major concern for law-abiding motorists in West Yorkshire and anyone caught using an uninsured vehicle can expect to have it seized and a large fine, with the added possibility of a court appearance. Everyone thinks they have the freedom of the road, but the reality is that all motorists have a legal, as well as a moral responsibility to make sure they are insured.”
According to figures obtained by Churchill Insurance, police seized nearly 28,000 uninsured cars last year.
They included one which was later sold for £217,933 at auction.
Steve Barrett, the head of car insurance at Churchill, said: “We need an urgent examination of the penalties for uninsured motoring, introducing sentences that are a real deterrent and that will keep these irresponsible motorists off the road.”
Sentencing often doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the crime
Ian Crowder, the AA
From: Coun Keith Wakefield (Labour), Transport Committee Chair, West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
IN response to your Editorial on a decade of indecision on the planned NGT scheme ( The Yorkshire Post, August 21), I would like to reassure readers that at no point over the past 25 years have we had any doubt that a modern transport system was needed to alleviate congestion on to the city centre through Headingley in north Leeds and from Stourton in the south.
We took the decision many years ago that a solution was needed and we have stuck by it. However the situation that sees final decisions and the purse strings held by Government ministers and civil servants based 200 miles away has meant our hands have been tied.
Government budget difficulties saw the Supertram scheme axed in 2005, leaving us to pursue, with Department for Transport support, the current bus-based option of NGT. Then, in 2010, the incoming government’s Comprehensive Spending Review saw the scheme put on hold for nearly two years. The effective local decision that devolution should bring would see an end to these remotely-imposed U-turns and delays.
Of course national legislation would still require a public inquiry, such as Leeds Supertram passed in 1999 and which took place last year for NGT. But it is only right that a scheme’s promoters have the chance to present its transport and economic benefit and people and interested companies opposed to the scheme are able to present their claims. We are confident that the case made for NGT at the public inquiry was compelling. It addresses transport problems that everyone recognises needs solving but for which no realistic, robust or affordable alternative has been proposed.
Our decision has not been stuck in the slow lane. It’s been stuck in London, but devolution offers an opportunity for that to change.
From: ME Wright, Harrogate.
IS there any European city the size of Leeds which relies solely on buses, be they electric or diesel?
The endless, costly Trolleybus saga ( The Yorkshire Post, August 21) is merely the latest dreary chapter in the city’s decades of “down to a price, not up to a standard” public transport history. I ask what are the city’s MPs doing about it?
Is it asking too much for them to set aside their political differences and, along with those from the wider region, to get Westminster by the political throat?