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Posts Tagged ‘insurance’

Since 2003 the issue of uninsured drivers has been one that has been looked at very closely by Government and relevant authorities, in order to comply with the 4th EU motoring directive. Now, the Government is planning on introducing “Continuous Insurance Enforcement”. So what is the 4th EU motoring directive?

The EU has broughtin this piece of legislation,to helpcitizens from different member states, claim on the insurance of another person who lives elsewhere in the EU. This is due to the fact that there are over 500,000 incidents between drivers of differing nationalities each year, and the process of dealing with a claim over 2 languages and 2 individual legal systems, would have been a very complex affair without it.

Every country has their own register of insurance policy details for all the vehicles on their roads, and the UK has the Motor Insurer’s Database. This helps the UK comply with the 4th EU directive and is used to monitor and cut down on uninsured driving. It also transpires that organised criminals often don’t bother to insure their vehicles, so enforcing insurance on the road also has the added benefit of interfering with serious criminal activities.

The system isn’t 100% perfect and frequently the MID isn’t as accurate as it should be, and this can mean being collared by the Police who will request insurance documents. Should these be not immediately available, or incorrect, then the vehicle may be impounded until evidence of insurance is supplied. Previously, fleet insurance policies were not registered on this system which did cause some unprepared fleet managers headaches, but thankfully, this is no longer the case and cars insured for business use are now taken into account.

Continuously Enforced Insurance

With current technology, Traffic Police patrols can easily detect offenders using onboard cameras that can actually read a vehicle’s licence plate.

Now the law has been changed, keeping a vehicle without insuring it,let alone driving one without insurance, is illegal unless that vehicle is declared officially off road. The information from both the DVLA and MID is being cross checked to identify these illegal vehicles and the keepers will be sent penalty fines with the threat of prosecution if the vehicle is not insured or the DVLA not notified of it being off road.