Britain Moves Forward With ‘No Insurance, No Fuel’ Plan

The Prime Minister’s plan would use automatic number plate recognition at the fuel pumps to bar uninsured drivers from filling up.

October 02, 2013

LONDON – Uninsured drivers will soon have more trouble tooling around once Britain’s “no insurance, no fuel” plan goes into effect, Petrol Plaza News reports. The Prime Minister’s office has spent the past year and a half working on the plan, which would use automatic number plate recognition technology (ANPR) to identify uninsured drivers at the pump. Once identified, the uninsured motorist would be barred from adding fuel to his vehicle.

Britain estimates that one in 25 drivers have not purchased the required auto insurance. Experts say that prohibiting them from filling up would reduce each household’s annual car insurance policy by £33.

To allay fears that the government would be gathering intel for a database, accounting firm Ernst & Young, which is assisting the government on the plan, said no new database was being formed. “No vehicles are tracked and no record is kept. It’s simply a new rule of no insurance equals no fuel,” said Graeme Swan, Ernst & Young partner. The Department for Transport said that “work is ongoing to see how these proposals could be brought into effect.”

The ANPR technology would use existing databases to check the numbers before allowing the driver to access the pump. Auto insurance companies support the proposal. “Uninsured drivers are a huge problem in Britain. “In many ways automatic number plate recognition is very similar to TV License vans and could stop uninsured drivers from making it onto the road. This is the next step in that. It’s a way of immobilizing a car that is not insured. As long as the system is protected against false positives it is a good thing,” said an Esure Insurance employee.

The plan is not without its critiques, who question whether it can be enforced. “This all sounds like it could work in theory, but in practical terms it will prove difficult to enforce. How could you ensure that there would be someone nearby to deal with it right away? Once you have caught them on garage forecourts, what do you do next? The police and DVLA have someone out there looking for uninsured cars already,” said a spokesperson for AA.

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