Its-My-Blog.com

Car insurance is a legal requirement in the UK, but one in twenty drivers persist in driving uninsured. The police are cracking down, and it’s not just an idle threat ?if you’re not insured, your car could be in a crusher near you very shortly!

The police now have the power to remove, impound and crush any car found to be uninsured on the road. Last Spring, in Durham, the scheme coined operation Take away was piloted to great success. Over 1,200 cars have immediately been impounded 50% of those have already made it to the crusher.

Operation Take distant was such a big success that it’s being rolled out nationwide. A new national police database that’s supported by the student auto insurance has given the police the ability to verify the insurance status of every car in the UK. They don’t even require to get out of the car to do it.

If you are caught on the road with a car that is not insured, you will have to give up your car keys there and then. It doesn’t matter if it’s an accidental mistake or you have been driving uninsured for years, the penalty is the same ?your car gets impounded.

What happens next? Well they give you two weeks to produce an insurance policy certificate and take your car away. There’s a few amounts involved too. You’ll have to settle around to cover the amount of the tow truck, and charges for keeping your car impounded often reach ?5 a day. Leave collecting your car to the last minute and you could be facing an overall bill
.
If you can produce the insurance certificate and settle the charges, you can say goodbye to your car. The pilot scheme in Durham was funded in part by Direct Line, who helped cover the expensess of crushing the cars. According to them, up to 2,000 accidents were avoided thanks to Operation Takeaway. Since a big proportion of the cars found to be uninsured were in fact un-roadworthy, the roads were a considerably safer place without them.

As the police said, noninsured drivers are many times guilty of many other offences such as not having a driving license or an MOT certificate. We are doing everything in our power to get these dangerous and illegal drivers off our roads.

It is a shocking fact that 5% of all drivers are uninsured, a criminal offence because it is a legal requirement. Extra research carried out by the Association of British Insurers has found that uninsured drivers are a dangerous presence on the roads, each uninsured driver causing an average of one accident every six months. They are also three times more likely to receive a conviction for driving without due care and attention.

Those of us who do have state farm car insurance quote cover the cost s of these uninsured accidents. On average, 60% is added to every car insurance policy to cover the amounts to the industry due to uninsured motorists. That means law-abiding motorists pay a whopping total of 500 million each year for those who can’t be bothered to settle up.

There’s another bitter pill to swallow. If you have an accident that’s not your fault with an uninsured vehicle, it will still go down as an adult claim on the average car insurance rates
. So you’ll have to pay the excess on your car repairs and you’ll lose your no-claims bonus unless you’re got claims protection. Over a two-year period, you could clear an extra 75 in premiums thanks to a reduction in your no-claims entitlement.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) is in full support of this new scheme to rid the roads of uninsured cars. The ABI has been a critic of the way the British courts deal with uninsured drivers for many years at once, but they still don? think this scheme is enough. Offenders usually only get a fine and they don’t have to pay immediately which really doesn’t compare to the extra cost s incurred by motorists who do have car insurance. We agree something requires to be done!

Technorati Tags: Accidents, Auto Insurance, Automobile Car, automobile insurance, average, car, Car Insurance, Car Keys, Crusher, Insurance, Insurance Certificate, Insurance Policy, Insurance Status, insured, Last Minute, Last Spring, Mistake, National Police, Pilot Scheme, Police Database, Proportion, rates, Safer Place, Takeaway, Tow Truck

All but the very luckiest of souls has, at some point, had their car towed away from them in the wake of malfunction from an automotive towing company, or worse, come out to the place it had once been parked only to find some phantom tow truck had grabbed hold of their prized possession and quickly spirited it away. The latter case is always most infuriating, though having to call an towing company is never anyone’s idea of a ripping good time in itself. Either way, without traffic enforcement bylaws and tow trucks we probably wouldn’t recognize the world we live in, so it’s time to accept their existence, and know a few things about them that can help you in case you have to cross their path.

The first thing to make sure of as a car owner is that you have a plan of action in mind in the event of a breakdown or, God forbid, a sudden realization that you haven’t the requisite amount of gasoline to continue running that combustion engine of yours. It’s embarrassing, yes – but hey, it happens to all of us, so the best thing to do is swallow pride and vanity and ring up a auto towing company ASAP to get that motionless heap of your off the road as quickly as humanly possible. Having a number handy with you in your car at all times is a necessity. Just when you’re having the worse day of your life as your engine overheats on two-lane bridge in the middle of summer, billowing smoke out like chimney, you don’t need the added joy of having to stop and ask someone if they know the number of a tow truck so that you can quickly get out of the flow angry motorists who are bound to be making vocal their aggravation with you.

But that, of course, is the worst of the possible scenarios which could force you to have to call a towing company. We’ve all done the key-in-the-ignition thing, where we frantically grope ourselves in hopes of realizing we’ve left our set of keys in some secret, hidden pocket we didn’t realize we had, and then peered in through the tightly sealed window to see them dangling there inside locked doors. Again, we hate to admit our own stupidity, but it happens, and a towing company is the first number you punch into your cell phone to admit the understandable lapse in common sense. Of course, you may also be in the unfortunate position of having battery with no more juice without another soul around to help jumpstart you back into running order.

And then there’s the other kind of auto towing that we have to bear witness to on a daily basis: the parking violation tow away. This, surely, is no laughing matter, but it’s also important for you as the motorist (in this case, parked motorist) to know that there are rules and regulations that every towing company must abide by before they hook themselves up to your car and speed off to the nearest impound lot. These laws are up to you to be aware of, and are occasionally broken at the motorist expense, when companies assume that car owners will be too ignorant to know their rights. Firstly, a car cannot usually be towed by an auto towing company due to a parking infraction unless the proper authorities are noted, and a significant amount of time (usually in the neighborhood of an hour) has elapsed to give the owner a chance to claim his automobile. Second, if you race out to see a truck in the process of raising your car up to tow away, you have the right to tell him to lower it back down, and it is against the law for him to impound it after you have done so.

Just knowing this much can save you money and stress, in what is bound to be a costly and stressful enough situation as it is. Know your rights and be prepared, and your encounters with the towing companies won’t be as horrifying as they could be.reverse cell phone lookup|reverse cell phone lookup| reverse cell phone lookup

Technorati Tags: Aggravation, Angry Motorists, auto parts, Automotive, Billowing Smoke, Bylaws, Car Owner, car parts, Cars, cars accessories, Chimney, Combustion Engine, Gasoline, God Realization, Good Time, Heap, Lane Bridge, Latter Case, Pride And Vanity, Scenarios, Sudden Realization, Tow Truck, Tow Trucks, Towing Company, Traffic Enforcement