BBC1 Traffic Cops 42

Initially at least, that isn't *strictly* true. When you start to drive, you're not individually buttessed because you have no record. So *you* are not higher risk, but the group to which you belong is. You get labelled with the driving record that those before you had - and you start paying for it too. Perhaps all 17 year olds should start off with 3 years NCD. Something for them to want to protect and to hold onto. If they turn out to be decent drivers, they won't lose it, they'll add to it and they'll never have to pay the kinds of insurance that they're not responsible for. However, if they *do* have an accident, then their insurance *does* go up accordingly which will claw back the money their accident cost. The problem with this initial proposal of course, is that they may well *then* choose to go down the route of not paying insurance, but perhaps steps should be put into place to stop that happening - such that even if they don't have insurance, they still owe the money over the next few years. Perhaps they pay into a secured bond which they get back after a few years if they don't make a claim. I dunno.. thinking aloud..

Which is fine by me although of course it would raise the bar for how desperate a driver caught driving without insurance would be to escape capture if seen on the road. "getting caught", should perhaps involve CCTV at every petrol station up and down the land having plate recognition. It's a start, although presumably it would prompt people to start trying to use false plates. They'd have to make sure that being caught with false plates was also a serious offence. It'd be reasonably easy for a database of fill-ups up and down the country to look for unlikely patterns where someone with a given plate fills up in Glasgow at 10am and then in London at 11:30pm for example. This sort of thing already goes on for cash machine withdrawals to monitor for cloned cards.

None of these solutions are totally ideal of course, but pointing out the issues doesn't negate the fact that changes are required and should be implemented to cut down on the amount of high speed chases that the police get into which often end up in a high speed crash.

I don't see that the person has to be chased down and caught red handed. If the car is on the road, uninsured then the owner is responsible. OK, you have to make the registration process tighter, but if that's what's required to reduce the number of high speed chases then so be it.

Perhaps then, that could be one change that might help the situation? Segment the insurance markets (although TBH, I can't see that helping although as I said, I wouldn't know).

Wouldn't be surprised if they tried to pbutt it off as "An act of Allah".

It doesn't seem to work like that. Kids that age are, in the main, insuring everyone else against their driving rather than insuring their car. Even the pootest of cars are considered a risk to everyone else with those drivers behind the wheel. I know the sorts of money that my 18yo brother pays for a total shed of a car that's extremely slow and uncool.

You need to talk to someone for whom it's an issue, for whom the money *is* a problem. Really, I think they might help you understand when they tell you the figures. When they tell you how much that insurance is in relation to the cost of where they live, the money they earn, the hours they'd have to work and the cost of their car. It'd be a shame if part of the people on the dole are put off working not because they can't or they can't find a job or they don't want to.. but simply because they can't afford to run a car and they don't live anywhere near where they can get a job and get public transport to.

Oh if only life were that easy, it'd be great for everyone. The real world simply isn't like that Adrian, really it isn't. More and more jobs are further away from housing estates - people are expected to drive. People don't work at the mill-pit at the end of their street anymore, they have to work at an out-of-town supermarket 5 miles away out in the middle of nowhere where shoppers are expected to drive to anyway and therefore buses rarely run to. Perhaps in your area it's not like that.

Perhaps the first mistake. Maybe the police should try to get clear footage-pictures of the driver before trying to stop them. Unmarked cars would obviously help in this case by not even alerting the driver. Just tailing them quietly until perhaps they pull up and get out. Or perhaps they'd just need to pull alongside them at the lights to get a good driver view. If it's a cop car then they can probably be quite cute about this, they don't have to wait for a dual carriageway.

How is the car unregistered? You may argue that it's not registered to the right person, but totally unregistered? Clearly the registration procedure would need tightening up of course. Then you can reliably fine the owner of the registration. Perhaps people would argue that their car wasn't on the road and that it must have been a false plated car, but popping around to the registered address to see that the car is missing (and perhaps present an hour later), would prove otherwise.

buttuming the police aren't fitted with the GPS tracking stuff.. I'd suggest that the police attempt to follow at a distance. If the chase gets such that the public are in mortal danger then they back off and contact the registered address for the car. Drive round, determine that the car isn't there. If it is, check the car for obvious signs that it's been driven recently.

Fitting every new car with an ECU where a rev-speed limited mode can be remotely activated by the police would also be quite a nice feature (not so sure as Tracker already do this?). Sure, people would try and 'chip' their own cars to override it, but it'd be quite a nice feature for stopping stolen cars.

So there's lots of ideas for trying to avoid high speed chases that put the public in mortal danger. Perhaps no single idea is a magical solution (I never claimed to have such a thing), but that doesn't mean that the current solution of chasing criminals until they crash is the right solution.