K9VYN [Kevin W]

All,

Your thoughts on the following?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/.../emnplat30.xml

Kevin

Luke

Buy a foreign plated car..

K9VYN [Kevin W]

I guess the question(s) is/are...

How effective will it be?

How much extra are we going to get taxed?

Will there be an increase in the theft of numberplates instead of tax discs?

Will the police have hand held readers or continue to utilise their current system to check cars?

And I am sure there are many other questions.

mista weava

sounds like an adminstritive night mare - i will be suprised if they are able to implement this effectively.

foreign plate car every six months before you must register it over here sound like a way around it - if you can be arsed to do this.
weava

alman

move to another country where :
-the crime rate is'nt the highest in world (among leading economies)
-The government is'nt hellbent on stealth taxes (speeding etc.)
-Cars are'nt the most expensive in the world
-Petrol is'nt the most expensive in the world
-the influx economic illegal immigrants is'nt the highest in the world
-you don't work the longest hours in europe
-the pub opening hours are later than a 12 year old's bedtime.

etc..
etc..
etc..


But the good news is that it's a government IT project, so it will be 20 times over budget, 4 years late
:-)
So by the time it's implemented they'll need to catch you speeding 5 times a year to pay for it :-)

Alpine

As usual everyone focusses on the negative.

Such a system would get rid of those crappy bits of paper in the car window that 'MANY' people ignore. It may also mean lower insurance as cars are easier to track without tracker systems and could ultimately lead to insurance being paid for as you drive... Lower premiums on motorways as there are fewer accidents etc...

I know I'm a dreamer and in reality it will become another form of taxation but I can dream!

speedking

Not sure how they would detect if you didn't have a chipped numberplate. Cameras photgraphing cars that didn't emit a signal?

Those interchangeable plates on lorry trailers would become a prime target for thieves. Just carry half a dozen in the boot and watch the confusion begin Perhaps trailers would be exempt

Perhaps the chips can be disabled if the number plate was stolen? In that case the clockers will soon develop the technology to beat the chip and only the innocent will suffer as usual

Too many 'what-ifs'.

dnb

Yes that's a big problem. There is another solution that would cost several orders of magnitude less though!!

Simple - don't have them at all. Instead have an "insurance disc" and add a couple of pence to petrol. Instant "get everyone" solution that is environmentally friendly and will cut down on red tape & Govt. wastage. (You could have an MOT one as well if you were bothered...)

When will people realise that sometimes the simple solutions are the best, and it doesn't need a microchip to be good???

(dnb - an electronic engineer )

Alpine

dnb.. I'm all for having the cost of third party insurance put on the price of petrol.. you buy petrol you have insurance.. Saves a lot of hassle? If you want more than basic cover you get your own policy..

Isn't this how it's done in SA?

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

dnb you may have an idea there, now let me think !!!!!

on my German plated car I have a sticker on the rear number plate which tells the police that the car is MOTd, taxed and insured. If I have no insurance I don't get number plates, no number plates = can't drive car. Insurance does not expire or need renewing it is all automatic unless you cancel it which is not allowed anyway, except for certain times during your contract.

I have a sticker on the front number plate which tells the police my emissions are correct, I have number plates which are issued by the DVLA (over here equiv) so can not be faked or reproduced.

Now wouldn't this be a terribly hard thing to implement in the UK !!!

dnb

That's my point really - why spend millions on a fancy technical solution that will cost 1000 times more, and be less than twice as good?

Not a good price/performance ratio really...

"The Americans spend millions developing a pen that will work in space. The Russians took pencils..."

(BTW, there are technical reasons why a pencil is not a good idea in an American space craft... but it's still a good story.)

Alpine - not quite what I had in mind, but it would good idea - no more cloak & dagger sinking fund made from your insurance payments (for uninsured accidents). I was thinking more along the lines that the insurance. co. sent you a disc with your policy document that you displayed.

angrynorth

At least with this there wouldn't really be much of a case in keeping the front numberplate.

Maybe like the US we can get rid, makes many, many cars look much better 'specially bug eyes!

Here's hoping :P

skipjack

strikes me that the big problem here is that the police and government get to track your movements into the bargain.

"hey scoob! a free and unfettered right to go about your legal business without intervention or interference?"

"uh-uh raggy, no way."

it's surveillance, nothing more. identical to the ID cards debate. the criminal/avoidance element here is a minority. so police the minority, don't police the majority.

call me paranoid, but this is just another incremental step toward orwell's telescreen.

boomer

skipjack...

spot on!!!!

mb

CharlieWhiskey

and keep several Scoobyneters gainfully employed for the next 5 years

BOOMER! , you got a job yet mate? Still on for Saturday?

skipjack

thanks boomer.

i hope this remains a(nother) pie-in-the-sky central government IT project that is doomed to expensive failure and electoral rejection.

if it becomes reality, i for one will support action to undermine it, legal or otherwise, for no other reason than that i value my unemcumbered freedom of movement.

(that notwithstanding, i'll hazard a guess that this is in breach of the european bill of human rights as an infringement of personal liberty anyway).

lastly, if i want a tracker, i'll pay for it myself on my own terms. i pay my car insurance, i pay my car tax like 95% of the car-owning population. the DVLA, the civil service and HMG can go pi55 up a rope. get off your fat, useless, central government ***** and empower the police to enforce the law as it stands and catch the freeloading 5% that don't.

the smartcard is not the answer to everything - as i think has already been succinctly observed.

boomer

skipjack,

i too hope that this "idea" doesn't get out of the starting blocks, both for financial as well as privacy reasons.

The "£1 per chip" sounds cheap, but what about the infrastructure to track it? Lets say that there are 10 million cars actually moving on the roads every day, and every road that you drive along will be logged. How many umpta-bytes of data is that to store, sort, process?? This is from the government who can't security-check a few thousand teachers before term starts [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

From a privacy point of view, all the law abiding citizens will be forced to comply (very Robo-Cop!) yet the crims will ignore the law and carry on in their evil ways.

Maybe they should install "chips" in the heads on the 40% of people who fail to pay their court fines EVER!!! Better still, exploding chips!!!!

mb

skipjack

boomer

precisely. it's all just a load of posturing ****. and largely unworkable. it's not so much the government that gets my goat, it's the entrenched civil service attitude ('cos that's where this junk comes from) that they should serve up a policy option because it fits the intellectually limp idealogical mindset of the government of the day.

just like GPS monitored speed limits that, if you read EVO, the idiot savant from transport 2000, steve hounsham (pounsham? who cares?), believed was absolutely necessary for road safety (the same man who belives that supercars like the McLaren F1 and that insane Bugatti 110 should be banned because they serve "no purpose").

hammer to crack a nut. but the real hammer is there to crack us.

DETR? hope you read this. because you're a bunch of transparent to55ers. overcook it and you'll pay the consequence. transport 2000? if you read this, get a life androids. and please declare your funding sources before you pretend to be an impartial pressure group.