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UK Plan Would Use CCTV To Stop Uninsured Drivers From Refueling
Mr_Blank writes "Cameras at UK petrol stations will automatically stop uninsured or untaxed vehicles from being filled with fuel, under new government plans. Downing Street officials hope the hi-tech system will crack down on the 1.4 million motorists who drive without insurance. Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras are already fitted in thousands of petrol station forecourts. Drivers can only fill their cars with fuel once the camera has captured and logged the vehicle's number plate. Currently the system is designed to deter motorists from driving off without paying for petrol. But under the new plans, the cameras will automatically cross-refererence with the DVLA's huge database."
what are the laws in the UK on nearband IR ground effects lighting?
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
What's to stop someone from filling a jerry can with gas and then fuelling their car, or can lawnmower and chainsaw operators no longer buy gas?
This would work just fine if the database was correct, which it simply isn't. Delays in getting information updated would mean you having a fully licenses, taxes, MOTed, and insured car that you couldn't fill up with petrol. So there'd need to be a way of overriding it, which puts a whole lot of pressure on the vendor.
Nice in theory, but I don't see it working. That doesn't mean I don't see it happening.
jh
if your going to be a police state then by all means do it right.
I guess they will need a black market for gasoline as well. Do they have seat belt laws? Baby seat laws? Why stop at not letting gas up because of lack of insurance. There are all so many wonderfully invasive things they can do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The UK already uses CCTV cameras on a massive scale to catch uninsured cars. Our motorways have cameras over every lane which track the numberplate and this information can both be used to calculate average speed over a section of road (to enforce speed limits) and also to check for insured, banned drivers, or stolen vehicles.
/. summary implies and more just an expansion of an existing project.
This is less a new idea as the
Wonderful, when the inevitable errors in the database occur you'll be stranded at some random gas station. Nothing in that article about how you could prove their database was incorrect or out of date.
At least if an officer ran your plate and stopped you you could provide proof of insurance, showing their database entry was wrong.
Why not, politics and bureaucracy aside, make the "mandatory" insurance something you pay with your vehicle registration?
Because large companies and trade associations in the private sector who have successfully captured the regulators find it unprofitable to put "politics and bureaucracy aside". For another, there'd still be tons of "politics and bureaucracy" in figuring out the premium that applies to each driver-vehicle pair.
And what about vehicles with foreign plates?
What can possibly go wrong?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Two points.
You don't get watched everywhere you go.
Ireland isn't in the UK.
how about jacking up the price of gas to buy insurance as you go? this would have the added side effect of making people think twice about driving 4 blocks to run an errand and buying giant gas guzzler vehicles. yeah, yeah, some issues about lawn mowers and such, but we could work out a system for that I'd think.
Hovercraft, ferries or eurotunnel (trains with car shuttle wagons) - just being an island doesn't mean cars don't transfer in both directions.
The UK is an island to the rest of the world, how are you getting your foreign car there? you know they drive on the opposite side as most of the rest of the world too right?
I have seen Hawaii license plates in Texas. How do you think those cars got here? Freight ships carry more than just toys and bananas. Also, you are forgetting about the Chunnel
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
Quite right old chap, I shouldn't have been driving uninsured, don't know what I was thinking. Here, take my car, I don't deserve the privilege if I can't use it properly, I've no doubt you'll handle it better than I have. Well, I've only 3 hours before I need to be to work and 60 km to go, so I'd best be off. Cheerio!
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Slashdot won't let you post until it verifies you haven't RTFA.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We've had ferries for years, and there's the channel tunnel as well.
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
They don't try to give the lawbreakers a fighting chance.
It seems like most of the complaints here are because people think this will work. It feels wrong that you actually cannot get away with breaking the law.
Think about it: Do you think it's a bad law to prohibit uninsured motorists? Do you think the police are likely to abuse this? (It uses existing cameras. If the police wanted to abuse it they can abuse the existing cameras already.) No? Then exactly what is your objection, other than that it doesn't seem fair that there's no way to get around it?
Think of it as a blacklist, any vehicle that has been registered in UK and has not paid tax/insurance will be blacklisted. Foreign vehicles will not be affected.
Because no one can fill up his car, and then just SIPHON it off to a friend
in a nearby parking lot?
I smell a black market opportunity!
<sarcasm>We're from the government, and we're here to HELP<sarcasm>
The flaws in your argument.
We have free health advice 'phone lines provided by our NHS and manned by qualified nurses.
Most people live in walking distance of their surgery. And pavements so, unlike many US cities, you can get there by walking.
We have free emergency ambulances, provided by the NHS.
We have people who drive people to where they want to go, we call them taxis.
We have bus services that will likely get you to a free clinic or an A&E if you don't think you should call an ambulance.
You really didn't think through your silly strawman at all did you?
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
What is wrong with the United Kingdom ? When did they go so far off the rails ?
(Yes, I know that you could ask the same question about the US, but this is not an article about the US and, if anything, things seem to be deteriorating faster there.)
The number plate recognition systems are limited to the big company's. Most/all independent garages don't have them and could expect a corresponding spike in business.
It's from England to France, dummy. It just has exits in Texas and Hawaii.
We do that already UK (and you can't a certificate of roadworthiness, MOT, without insurance).
Guess what that means...
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Guilty until proven innocent? No, it's the other way around; indeed, the US 'innocent until proven guilty' *comes* from UK common law. You stupid fucktard.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
of paying at the pumps, they'll just steal others' gas...
And what about vehicles with foreign plates?
Oh noes! With your incisive insight you have identified the flaw in the plan that no-one else thought of! Foreign plates, doh! Who would have thunk it?!
This proposal is not about recognition of the registration number, it is about recognition of the number plate of a UK registered vehicle that does not have current insurance. If the plate is not recognised then it will be ignored. Or maybe flagged for approval by the petrol station.
Remember, the station owners do not wish to supply to anyone with bad registration plates either, they have a habit of driving off without paying.
I know if I was heading to England and saw an exit for Hawaii, I'd make some quick travel changes.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
So what happens when a pedestrian walks up to a filling station with a gas can in hand and has no car to fill either because it ran out of gas down the road, or he's just walked from his house down the street to get some gas for his lawnmower?
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
So if the camera fails to see your license plate you get no gas? Clever. I'm sure that another car or truck will never obstruct the camera's view, that snow will never obscure the plate, that fog will never blur the plate letters, that the plate will always be adequately illuminated, that the cameras will never break down, that the license database will always be up-to-date and on-line. No flies in THAT ointment, no sir.
All this fal-de-ral just to make sure that a few people pay their vehicle tax? Why not simply require everyone to pay their tax annually when they register their vehicle? Put a sticker on the windshield showing that the tax was paid, LIKE THEY DO EVERYWHERE ELSE.
Or if you must monitor everyone's tax status minute-by-minute, have everyone carry a tax-paid UPC fob that is scannable by a credit card swiper (or an attendant) when you pay for your gas? Would that cost, oh perhaps, a BILLION pounds less than buying and wiring up multiple spy cameras for every service station in the UK?
Who comes up with ideas this overcomplex, ineffective, and brain damaged? Newt Gingrich's british cousin?
It is not the tech, it is the social customs. Fill then pay has been customary in the UK since filling attendants disappeared, probably forty years ago. People expect to fill then pay, and will probably avoid a station that demanded prepay. And, since most filling stations double as convenience shops, I bet that they will get many more sales from people who have done the primary task of filling up before they pay rather than people who are focussed on filling up rather than buying papers or chocolates.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
The first person who loses his job because of a database or connectivity problem keeping him from gassing up on the way to work should be able to sue those who came up with this INDIVIDUALLY.
Not sue the government so the taxpayers make up for up for their mistakes. But these people who think they can tweak our lives any way they want need to learn there can be real consequences.
I still wish some government bureaucrat in the US could be in jail for manslaughter for the first kid who died from a mandated airbag before multi-stage, safer airbags were developed.
Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Jesus, what happened to the idea of personal responsibility? So, what? The hypothetical guy who can't gas up on the way to work gets to sue the gas station if it's closed that day too?
It's the driver's responsibility to ensure that he has gas, has a roadworthy vehicle and to ensure that it is adequately taxed and insured.
Those "real consequences" like suing someone because you didn't have enough gas to drive to work and an admin issue at the gas station, where you went to fill up your almost totally empty tank at the last minute (ie, on your way to work) certainly are serious.
"Yes, your honour, I didn't have enough gas to get to work, and I thought I'd fill up on the way at the last minute because I believe that unless every single thing involved in my journey is 100% perfect I am entitled to sue".
mmm.