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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'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
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
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.
I assume you want to block the ANPR.
Drivers can only fill their cars with fuel once the camera has captured and logged the vehicle's number plate.
What?
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.
There already is a black market for gasoline and diesel. You can buy it tax-free from all sorts of places if you know where to look, and it's a huge, huge source of revenue loss for the government because fuel is so expensive here (you yanks whine and moan about $4 per gallon, I would be ecstatic for prices that absurdly cheap). The most common offenders are cab drivers running their cars on red diesel bought from black market fuel stations. (red diesel is so called because it is for farm and construction vehicle use and not for use on the road and thus sold tax free. It is dyed red to make it easily identifiable.)
And yes, we do have seat belt laws, and baby/car seat laws.
Why put so much effort into getting around the system rather than voting the douchebags that come up with this stuff out of office and taking your government back?
Comment not limited to the Brits. The US government needs a good housecleaning as well.
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if your going to be a police state then by all means do it right.
What do you mean by "police state"? If some f***ing idiot thinks he or she can drive around with an uninsured car, which hasn't been tested for roadworthiness (because you can't get an MOT without insurance), leaving everyone else to pay for the damage to cause, then most people in Britain would want their cars to be taken away and destroyed.
Add Canadians to the list.
We are currently going through our "Bush" phase.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
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
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The law is the law - you must have insurance in your EU or US state. Whether that law is enforced with human eyes or camera eyes really makes no difference (IMHO). I have to waste ~$300 a year to insure other drivers & their cars in case I hit them..... I don't see why anyone else thinks they shouldn't have to pay the bill too.
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Why so much hate?
The ANPR system is already widespread in the UK (although the headline seems to suggest this is new, it is not).
At gas stations it is generally used to catch bilking after the fact (ie, once the drive off has already happened), and is used elsewhere (eg, in police vehicles and on static cameras that watch the main motorway routes) to catch uninsured and untaxed drivers.
The overwhelming majority of fuel theft (in the form of drive offs) is committed by uninsured drivers, and adding a further obstacle to keep the dickheads off the road in the first place can only be a benefit.
At present the DVLA's database is not perfect so as it stands there would be a small but non-trivial number of false positives (too high for a system that prevents fuelling as a binary choice) but it is very easy to correct genuine mistakes. It might even be beneficial for those who are flagged incorrectly in the DB since they would have a chance to sort it out (reporting correct details to the DVLA and making sure your insurance is valid is *your* responsibility) before being pulled over by a police interceptor while you're on the motorway or something (thus wasting both your and the police's time sorting out the mistake).
Let's not paint this as a "the government can't tell me what to do! freedom! rah!" issue - there is no "right" to drive a car, and you have no innate "right" to buy fuel for it from a private business that specialises in selling such flammable liquids to the public. If you're driving around uninsured then, honestly, fuck you - get your uninsured pile of shit off the public road so you don't crash into someone and cause them all manner of headaches because you *are not insured*.
Fucking A. However, I'd be more excited if this initiative resulted in falling car insurance premiums, which I doubt it will. Just yesterday I was quoted between £4,000 and £12,000 for car insurance for a 7 year old Honda S2000, despite having over 5 years NCB, never having had a speeding ticket, never having had any motoring convictions AND agreeing to have a tracker box fitted to the car.
People who drive uninsured don't do it just because they're all dicks (admittedly, many of them are), but because they're priced out of the freaking market by companies with a license to print money.
On an unrelated note, fuel prices are ~70% tax ffs. And these government shitheads honestly cannot work out why people break the law?
As long as it is human readable...what's the problem.
I'm wanting to experiment with putting a bunch of hi powered infrared LEDs all around my license plate, and see if that will blind out the stupid cameras...while leaving it nicely readable to the human eye.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Sounds like these people need to Go Compare! They're so Money Supermarket they don't even know it. Comparing the Market is Simples.
The UK has such an industry in Car insurance that Industry hints and tips have been automated into websites that are entirely their OWN industry. All with their own REALLY annoying adverts.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
Sure! Why worry? You've already "agreed" that the government can track your car's movements, what's wrong with this next step: Allowing the government to control your car's movement. With this system they can automatically deny you fuel, what could possibly go wrong? You are "not doing anything wrong" so "you have nothing to worry about", right?
It's all controlled by computers and they never have glitches, they never have bad data. No government employee would accidentally or on purpose screw with your data. The government would never use this to deny fuel to innocent (but "suspicious") people. No!
Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.
Whether that law is enforced with human eyes or camera eyes really makes no difference
Yes, actually it does. "enforcing the law" with Orwellian bullshit is not really enforcing the law as much as it is eroding your rights to privacy.
Require proof of insurance in order to renew registration every year. There. Fixed. And nobody has to spy on anyone at the gas station.
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It's a large problem - mainly because fuel is so expensive ($8-9 per gallon) and almost all stations are "fill, then pay" and almost none at all have pre-payment. Some have card readers on the pumps themselves, too, but usually only on a few pumps in a station.
The ANPR system being at gas stations is just a natural extension of where it's normally used (and it's already well established in fuel stations, and has been for some years) - in police cars and on main motorways. Cars have to visit fuel stations, so if you're uninsured or your car is stolen etc, it has a higher chance of being seen on the system. It's not solely about fuel theft.
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.
In the UK a trailer must bear the same number as the vehicle towing it. So the vehicle has the front number and the trailer has the same number on the rear. End of story, if the trailer has a different number you are breaking the law and deserve the problems. I still do not like this system though as it will give me problems when I am driving on foreign plates. Will I have to tape fake plates on to get petrol? People talk about the problems but do they really think about how bad it will be for a false flagged person that cannot use their car?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I wouldn't bank on it :(
My premiums have actually been rising over the last 2 years despite having a totally clean license, never had an accident and never been convicted of a motoring offence. £800 went up to £850 the following year and that became £1,000 the year after when I moved house to an area with *lower* car crime rates.
The whole system is corrupt as can be. Insurance is mandatory (fair enough), but they charge so much that it is out of reach for people who genuinely *need* it, so they drive uninsured. Insurance companies then raise prices, blaming uninsured drivers, forcing yet more people who want to abide the law out of the market.
And what's even worse? People who would struggle with the exorbitant rates are shafted YET AGAIN because paying monthly is A LOT more expensive than paying annually.
And then what happens if you do have an accident? The insurance company goes out of its way to make sure it doesn't have to pay you a penny. The whole thing makes me feel physically and violently ill. (apologies for the rant!)
Of course, this is because by the "Obama" phase, it becomes clear just how much the "Bush" phase fucked things up. Note that simpering halfwits will attribute this to the "Obama" phase, but they're morons and normally can be safely ignored.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have to waste ~$300 a year to insure other drivers & their cars in case I hit them
Ah, but there is a way to beat the system on this. Remember the money isn't "wasted" if you actually go out and hit the other cars...
"But this one goes to 11!"
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.
Sorry, no, its required to be unobscured to all reading methods - many people have tried what you are suggesting already and ended up with fines or imprisonment, it's not a new thing at all as people have been suggesting such things to avoid speed cameras for decades in the UK.
I saw this story posted a few hours ago with no comments and wondered how long it would take for someone to try and make the distinction between human readable and readable - again, sorry but no such distinction exists in UK law.
Have you tried? We bought a car which had been cloned - after the clone had crashed into school gates and the driver locked up. We spent more than 6 months dealing with police and local authorities damanding payment for things that happened to the other (clone) car, before we owned the original. The people running this system cold not run a bath, they are so incompetent.I am in favour of compulsory insurance, but only when the same degree of regulation applies to the insurance companies as applies to the insured. (I am also in favour of public lynchings for the people running some of the insurance companies at present).
As for the clown that said "if you can afford a car, you can afford to insure it" you do realise that you can by a perfectly usable three year old car for about £2,500, but the (3rd party) insurance for someone under 25 is likely over £5,000 in London.
Can someone at /. explain why my pounds have mysteriously become Australian or something?
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