Uninsured driving to be an offence
Published On 15 January 2008
All vehicle owners will be legally required to have insurance in the future, a leading general insurance organisation has said.The British Insurance Brokers' Association (Biba) indicated that continuous insurance enforcement is to become an offence, creating penalties for uninsured drivers.
People that own vehicles but do not use them will have to get a statutory off road notification (SORN).
Graeme Trudgill, technical and corporate affairs executive for Biba, explained how the new offence would be enforced.
"If you've got a vehicle with no insurance then you're going to get systematically letters sent out followed up by penalty notices. So you won't be able to get away with having a vehicle and not insuring it anymore," he said.
The new measures are intended to combat the "pain and misery" which uninsured driving causes to people's lives.
Mr Trudgill also noted that insured drivers end up bearing the cost, saying: "We pay an extra £30 on our policies because of the levy that every policy holder pays to the Motor Insurers' Bureau, who then pay out the victims of uninsured driving,"
Biba has been working with the Department of Transport on uninsured driving publicity campaigns, which it anticipated will be launched in a year's time.
