How uninsured drivers were caught

The uninsured driver hit squad assembled just after lunchtime; experience has shown that many uninsured or disqualified drivers do not hold down a regular jobs so the afternoon was the best time to catch them. Five vehicles in all were involved; a camera van to catch uninsured drivers, another camera van little further on to catch drivers with unpaid fines, a transporter to take the seized cars away, a lorry for the motorbikes and a police car about 300 yards down the road in a layby. As if that was not enough, there was a uniformed police officer stationed by a pedestrian crossing a further hundred yards down, visually checking tax discs.

The road that had been selected had been chosen well; traffic was heavy and moving slowly, which gave everyone a lot of time to react. As the cars crawled past the first camera van their number plates were read and compared against several databases that were running on a computer inside the van. When a suspected vehicle was spotted by the cameras a police officer checked the details against the central police computer system, which holds the most up-to-date record, and once he was satisfied that a vehicle was probably uninsured he radioed down to the police officers in the layby who stopped the suspect car or motorbike. In the meanwhile, a similar job was being done in the second camera van, but the database this time held court records of unpaid fines. Once the vehicles had been stopped the occupants were interviewed on the spot; if the police officers were satisfied that the vehicle was indeed uninsured it was immediately confiscated, and loaded onto the transporter or lorry ready for taking to the police pound.

Offenders were given a fixed penalty of £200; and in addition to this there was a charge of £105 for the transporter. To add to the driver's woes, a storage charge of £12 a day was also to be levied, everything to be paid within seven days or the vehicle would be crushed. Drivers in addition were given an automatic six points on their licence, provided that they did not have any 'form' for similar offences, in which case most of them were bailed to appear before the magistrates. The worst offenders, who were driving whilst disqualified, were arrested, kept in the cells overnight and arraigned before magistrates the following morning.

Driving without insurance and driving whilst disqualified, were only some of the offences which came to light. The vehicles were all checked over and a number of drivers were reported for endorsable offences such as faulty tyres, non-endorsable ones such as faulty seatbelts or illegal horns, and road tax evasion. A substantial sum was also collected in unpaid fines.

This operation was quite typical of the sort of efforts which are being made continuously throughout the country to catch uninsured drivers. Since the second of June 2011 it is an offence to even own an uninsured vehicle, even if it is kept on a private drive, without making a SORN (Strategic off Road Notification); vehicle details are now checked against the Motor Insurers Bureau database and where an uninsured vehicle is found that is not on the SORN list the owner faces a £100 fine, with the prospect of the car being confiscated and crushed if the situation is not rectified.

The odds against getting away with driving without insurance have always been long, but now they have got even longer.