Thread: Disgraceful behaviour by Discovery driver

Originally Posted by Eevo

3rd party personal, not 3rd party property.

Again, no. You are required by law to have a separate 3rd party policy on each vehicle, and it covers 3rd person injury (like the green slip) AND property.

A 10 year UK licence renewal costs GBP14, which is about $30. How much insurance would you get for $3 a year?

Originally Posted by Warb

Again, no. You are required by law to have a separate 3rd party policy on each vehicle, and it covers 3rd person injury (like the green slip) AND property.

A 10 year UK licence renewal costs GBP14, which is about $30. How much insurance would you get for $3 a year?

ive been told very different.

Originally Posted by Eevo

ive been told very different.

Ah, the joys of the internet! Whoever told you that has no idea what they're talking about (I have owned and driven vehicles in the UK for the last 35 years). The system in the UK is quite similar to over here. The vehicle is inspected each year to check it is safe, much the same as here except they use a rolling road to test the brakes. This is the "MOT" (Ministry of Transport) vehicle safety test. Then the "registered keeper" buys an insurance policy and pays for a year of "road tax", which is the rego equivalent.

The minimum insurance that must be purchased is "3rd party", but almost everyone increases that to at least "3rd party, fire and theft" which covers the legal 3rd party requirement and also provides the owner with insurance against the vehicle being stolen or burnt. Full insurance is called "fully comprehensive" and covers all risks, at a much higher cost.

It is a legal requirement to have third party insurance, and there is no insurance included in either the license or road tax fees. Each vehicle is treated separately, and requires it's own insurance. The only exception to these rules are for those in the motor trade, who can have "trade plates" which are number plates registered to a trader that can be temporarily attached to any vehicle for the purpose of delivery etc., and can also have special insurance policies.

Just Google it, but look at the UK Government pages if you want facts rather than opinion.

Originally Posted by bee utey

... .... .

Oh and as an owner of too many vehicles and a number of bikes, I think the current rego system is a useless idea. I'd like to think that you should be able to drive any suitable vehicle by just hanging a small plate off it (or an electronic tag) with your driver's licence number on it. You could then be charged for your actual wear and tear on the road system instead of some wild guess of the amount.
... ....

About 45 years ago, a friend of mine wrote a few letters to the editor of the Canberra Times advocating a system that would have some of the benefits of the system you are describing.

His argument was that rego should cost almost nothing and that petrol (there were almost no diesel cars then) should be very expensive.

if you owned a car and it spent most of its life parked in your garage, you would have caused very little wear and tear on the roads and your motoring would be very cheap. The more you drove, the more you would contribute.

if you had a small, light car that used very little fuel, your motoring would cost less than if you had a big, heavy, fast car.

His argument was that with the right prices, it could be revenue neutral if that was considered politically necessary.

So basically you were paying more if you wore out the roads more.

He also argued that with petrol so cheap (as it was in the 70s and still is), there was no real incentive to leave the car at home and walk, ride or take public transport.

Originally Posted by vnx205

His argument was that rego should cost almost nothing and that petrol (there were almost no diesel cars then) should be very expensive.

Schemes like this sound great, until you get to the details. "User pays" is something I wholeheartedly support, but should it apply across the board? Playing devils advocate, if the local swimming pool needs repair, why should my council rates be used? I have never been to the pool! If I have no kids, why should I be forced to support the school system? When applied to rego and paying for roads, if I can walk to work then why should I pay the same rego as someone who wears out the roads more?

Or do we regard the roads as a shared resource, for the good of the community and therefore funded by the community as a whole? If the roads are paid for on the basis of wear and tear, is that fair to those who live in rural areas who have no public transport available? What about the plumber or electrician who drive to people's houses?

The reality is that nobody could survive without the roads. How do we think the food gets to the supermarket? Almost everything in our lives is transported by road, and on that basis perhaps a fairer approach is that everyone, man woman and child, whether or not they own a vehicle, should pay "rego"?

Everything on the planet is a shared resource.

Sounds a bit like the way Youi tries to tailor insurance premiums to the usage patterns of the vehicle. Hard to enforce though.

Originally Posted by Warb

Ah, the joys of the internet! Whoever told you that has no idea what they're talking about

wasnt the internet, was a guy at work who immigrated from england.
i'll ask him next week. i've probably remembered the story wrong.