BBC1 Traffic Cops 49

Well I certainly have to tell them enough details about myself. I can't imagine there's too many people of my age, status, driving history, car model, licence status, previous points, accident history and NCB living down my road.

Have you never played with an online insurance quoter to see what difference changing each variable makes?

See above. A 17yo barely has any of this history and is therefore grouped into a far more general pot.

Sure, call it something else then if it causes you a problem. The driver won't have made a claim, so technically it's true. Call it a New Car Driver discount if you want the same abbreviation. All semantics and it doesn't matter WRT the point of giving new drivers an initial discount for them to hang onto.

I'm amused that the only fault you could find with that proposal is that the abbrevation for it doesn't fit... but you felt that was worth pointing out? It speaks volumes about your increasing agenda to simply find fault and disagree Adrian.

Really? I guess then we disagree on how seriously we consider the idea of someone being chased crashing into you and leaving you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Petrol stations are already full of CCTV anyway, both on the forecourt and when paying.

I can't imagine the guy who spent three *months* in hospital complaining about plate recognition at petrol stations.

Yes. I wouldn't claim it's a complete solution. Not sure what the problem you're having here is.. can you give a complete question?

Hmm.. You started writing this before reading the entire post didn't you Adrian? (which tells a story in itself). Otherwise you'd have seen the proposals I put forward to prove they were driving at the end of my post.. I'll requote it here:

"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."

See above.

Using the DVLA database which would be tight enough to be relied upon. Adrian mate, I'm not saying that changes in other areas wouldn't have to be made. There's unlikely to be a different situation that we can switch to tomorrow. Maybe other things would have to be implemented-developed first. That doesn't mean it's not viable or it's the wrong thing to do!!

I have no idea! But if it's not tight enough that it can be relied upon, then changes would be required - simple as.

Like I said in the last post Adrian (but you snipped without acknowledgement):

"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"

Pointing out holes in any quickly thought up solution I might come up with isn't disproving my point - you do realise this? You're just showing that it needs more thought and perhaps more work, legislation and development - not that it should be scrapped and that we should champion the Starsky & Hutch style car chases.

OK, I'll explain further. You're suggesting that the cost of 9-11 causes an impact on insurance worldwide, am I wrong? To me, that seems a bit ridiculous and if segmented properly, it wouldn't.

Maybe £2k instead of £1.5k. It doesn't make the £1.5k cheap and affordable. And remember that's per year.

However, are you suggesting that it's the Max Power chav brigade that drive around uninsured? I'd honestly be surprised since to them their cars are their lives and they spend thousands on them - I'd be shocked if they didn't have them at least insured TPF&T. IME it's people on the breadline with already pooty cars (one example I know of was a very knackered Rover 216 which was given to him), worth a couple of hundred pounds.

Not just the cost of the insurance itself, but how it relates to their income and the costs of everything else in their lives.

Oh good god (head in hands). You've not been in this position have you? Really, you should speak to people in this position if you can.

Clearly it isn't, or thousands of people wouldn't be driving without insurance - a vastly increasing percentage. It's no good burying your head in the sand and saying that they shouldn't be and that it's "THAT simple". You have to realise that they are and understand the reasons for it if you want to reduce it.

You sure? Please quote your figures and source.

Great if you're a 20 year old lad and there's somewhere to get showered-changed when you get there. Not so good if you're a single mother of 3 who needs to drop her kids at their grandparents before going being a cleaner at a bingo hall after it shut at midnight.

Really Adrian, for some people, £1k a year on insurance *is* a ridiculous sum. They're in catch-22 because they end up living in a pooty area where the crime rates keep their insurance costs high.

In what way? Not expecting to drive doesn't move the jobs any closer to your house. I really don't see the point of making a distinction. Please explain.

Are you familiar with the retail estate off J3 of the M66 in Bury? There's a 24hr Asda there and also some large restaurants, McDonalds and a bowling alley and a cinema that probably don't close until at least midnight. These places need to be cleaned afterwards of course, ready for the next day - the staff don't get to go home when the punters do. Catching a bus at those times is simply not an option and riding a bike down the M66 doesn't seem ideal either. There's a single housing estate about a half mile down Pilsworth Rd that's reasonably affluent and you wouldn't expect too many of those to be minimum wage workers - certainly nowhere near enough people to staff the supermarket and the other huge places there. So the staff come from miles away. I've personally known of two people who worked at Asda there, and they drove in from *at least* 5 miles away.

Not at all of course - just not quite sure how many examples I need to post in order to prove a point. Here's some more: consider the examples of people who do office cleaning work. Think of all the cleaners that must work outside of office hours in a place like Trafford Park. Some of them will live in some rather dodgy areas around Manchester (the sorts of areas where middle aged women don't really fancy standing at bus stops at 9pm at night). Most of Trafford Park isn't in any reasonable walking distance from any housing estate, and a bike isn't really viable for a working mother. Incidentally, if you do work in an office and sometimes bump into the cleaning staff - try to imagine how they'd get on if you asked them to ride a bike on their 10 mile round trip to-from work. In fact, go up to them and suggest it and tell me what happens.

See above. *Please* tell me you'll suggest it to your cleaning staff at work. When they protest, call them a "poor dear". Really, I'd *love* to be there when you do.

Then I think we might find out how much you know about the real world.

The copper has a camera which has a torch on the end (hell if we can all have cameras on our phones with LEDs on, then the cops can!). He shines it at the driver window (at such an angle not to reflect). The guy will almost certainly react by looking round. Full on face shot recorded. I honestly think that alone would convince many crims that's they're nicked and it's not worth trying to get away.

It's crazy how much you're trying to pick up on the most minute detail to try and find some sort of fault to justify the police chasing people at lethal speeds through urban areas. Y'see how you're just trying to put problems in the way of the solution rather than trying to defend the current S&H solution - that's intriguing in itself.

How so? I realise that would be the definition of an unregistered car - but you have to explain how it gets that way.

Multiple RFID chips in each car, how about that. Swap the plates all you like but the VIN can be read from 20 metres. Create better regulation on the creation of number plates so that false plates are trickier to create (you'd have to steal them, but make them trickier to steal such that they break when you remove them). Perhaps the plates themselves would also have RFID chips in.

All solutions Adrian - it just takes a bit of thought. Haven't you noticed that we're going through a roundabout of problem - solution and you're not actually defending the S&H car chases?

GPS tracker dots if they want to track it. Perhaps they could register the number plate as being suspect and then no petrol station in the land will fill it up.

Technology Adrian. None of your little problems are any excuse to put the public in mortal danger.

Really, they aren't.

The system needs to be largely infallible. I'm not about to redesign the system on usenet, but it simply *should* be reliable. Whatever has to happen to make that so, needs to happen.

I believe the police have radios. I'm not suggesting that the very same cop car has to do the task! Besides, if it's at the other end of the country then it isn't going to get back there without filling up with petrol...

They'd do that to their own car just because they got seen driving without insurance?! Oh come on!!

I find it a little amusing that you totally snipped an entire proposal I posted:

"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"

Couldn't find a problem with this one so you snipped it? Give it some more thought and I'm sure you could find some issue, but it'll only be an issue that can be solved with a little more thought - as we've seen already in this thread.

That's the conclusion here Adrian - from you, from Conor, from whomever. None of you are trying to defend that the current situation of S&H style chases that put the public in mortal danger is the best solution. In your hearts you know it isn't. I'm not trying to propose the complete and magic solution and an inability to do so doesn't make me wrong in pointing out that escalating situations into car chases that potentially kill innocent members of the public is stupid.

Why you choose to then be negative about any form of alternatives is both disappointing and yet curious. Have either of you proposed any solution to reduce the number of potentially bane car chases? Or are you happy with them going on? What about if they became a regular occurrence in your area and you knew someone who'd been end in such a chase? Would that change your mind?