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HAVE YOUR SAY

SHOULD ALL UNINSURED DRIVERS BE JAILED?

Police warn uninsured drivers are a menace

Saturday August 16,2008

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(75)

UNINSURED drivers are killing four people a week – yet the penalties are getting softer.

Figures have revealed that 208 people died in accidents caused by uninsured drivers in 2006, compared with 160 in 2000 – a rise of almost a third.

Yet the average fine for driving without insurance has dropped by 17 per cent from £224 in 1997 to just £185 now.

This is less than the average fine imposed for smoking in a smoke-free place, £200.

And it is a fraction of the £1,000 fine for not having a TV licence.

The figures come just weeks after it was revealed that judges have been told in official court guidance to let off killer drivers with no insurance.

The latest figures will anger Daily Express readers who three years ago won the promise of a Government crackdown on uninsured drivers.

Amy Aeron-Thomas, executive director of the road crash victims’ charity RoadPeace said: “More needs to be done to catch and keep these criminals off the road before they kill or injure innocent people."

So, what do you think...should all uninsured drivers be jailed?

HARVEYMIFF... YOU MUST LIVE A VERY INSULAR LIFE..

09.09.08, 1:50am

Certainly not anywhere near me..

I see old age pensioners being treated like sex offenders cause they sun-bathed naked in their back yard.. I see school teachers lives ruined because strait consensual adult porn is found on their computer.. I see good drivers who have never had an accident have their license taken away for looking at a mobile phone while waiting at the lights.. Decent folk ending up in jail for little more than using bad-language in front of a police officer.. Students, jailed and interrogated for peacefully protesting without permission.. Holiday makers have their car crushed for buying 1 too many packets of cigs in France.. Now our BDSM community risk 3 years in jail for living their own lives.. Our students are told which propaganda they can and can not read..

I could go on, but all of these things ALL OF THEM are justified by the flawed philosophy that one thing leads to another.. so we just skip the inconvenience of the presumption of innocence and go strait to the presumption of guilt, there is a name for legislating in the manner you are advocating, its called draconian, look it up.

we don't even know how many uninsured drivers are out there, only the ones we catch, so the figures are not only misleading, they are completely unknown.

And sure there are other examples; everyone on heroin addict probably smoked cannabis at one time, but if everyone who has smoked cannabis went on to heroin over 1 third of our population would be junkies, if everyone that downloaded music from the net went on to sell it they would be lined up on every street in the country.. The idea is ludicrous and completely baseless.

Your whole argument is the stuff of fairytales and bad crime films: that if someone is dishonest it means they must be hiding an A-bomb somewhere as there are only good -law abiding citizens and evil doers on the planet, no gray areas, no reason, monkey see monkey do, if monkey swears in public well, monkey must have an AK47 hidden in his car.. ludicrous.

• Posted by: cor • Report Comment

BUT, IT'S TRUE. IT'S A FACT!

07.09.08, 11:47am

One thing does lead to another. If a person who is lawless in one thing, subsequent investigations will always reveal more crime. It's also a fact that in the 1960s when a mandatory six month disqualification was the penalty for no insurance, there were fewer offenders.

Minor sex offenders who flash, then go on to do noncing and worse. It's a fact of life. Unless you nip it in the bud, you end up with a serious problem.

• Posted by: Harveymiff • Report Comment

HARVEYMIFF...

03.09.08, 11:39pm

Just because a statistic says you are a bit more likely to be a gun toting maniac if you are not wearing your seat belt -does that mean the police should open fire on anyone driving without a seatbelt?

Ok, enough examples, but you are advocating the assumption of guilt; which goes against everything justice stands for: To be innocent until proven guilty is the basis of our justice system, if it were the other way around then this would be a truly horrid place to live..

Your way is rather sneaky; to assume someone is guilty of a crime they can't even defend against, while charging them on a lesser crime that carries the punishment of the much worse crime that they are already guilty of before going to court...

'One thing always leads to another.'

No it does not. this is the kind of useless premise that has been the base for all the really bad laws recently, to assume that if someone who enjoys a trashy horror / porn euro flick they must be rabid rapists and so lock them up for 3 years and put them on the sex offenders register... If someone reads the terrorist handbook (lol) they must be a terrorist so lock them up / interrogate and deport them.. Hell if someone wears a 'Bollox to Blair' t-shirt within a mile of parliament they are 'assumed' to be terrorists or worse peace protesters and locked up...

The bottom line is that people are complicated, someone who doesn't think twice about not paying their insurance might be abhorred at the thought of speeding or driving recklessly and taking away their right to be innocent until proven guilty of that crime over a few statistics is cold and unjust.

• Posted by: cor • Report Comment

PUT THEM TO WORK IN THE COMMUNITY

03.09.08, 11:28pm

They should be banned from using the road, and sent into doing community work if they offend more than once. The jails are already full, and these wrong-doers should be put to doing something useful for the Community.

• Posted by: lilies • Report Comment

IN A WAY, YES; YOU ARE RIGHT THAT UNINSURED DRIVERS ARE NOT NECESSARILY BAD DRIVERS BUT...

01.09.08, 9:36pm

Drivers of vehicles who refuse to take out insurance or take out a policy, receive their certificate and then cancel the payments are law breakers. People who do this have no regard for the law and are most likely to be driving with no regard either. One thing always leads to another. Coppers pull a driver with no seatbelt (a minor misdemeanor) but then after stopping him or her, other things always come to light.

No tax, no insurance, no licence, drunk or drugged. In general, once a person is proved to be dishonest in one thing, further investigation usually reveals other crimes. We are not talking about a driver who discovers that they are not covered by a mistake due to direct debit payments to the insurance company which, can be proved to be a genuine oversight. We are talking about drivers who have made a conscious decision to deliberately drive without having any insurance whatsoever.

The law of the land is fairly flexible and deliberate intent as opposed to innocent oversight is ironed out in a court of law with an educated judgement given after all of the evidence is heard.

• Posted by: Harveymiff • Report Comment

I DO NOT AGREE TO DRIVE VEHICLES WITHOUT INSURANCE, BUT

31.08.08, 11:09pm

I do not agree that the drivers should drive vehicles uninsured.

However, due to exorbitant insurance premium, drivers should not be blamed for this. Year after year the insurance companies are making huge profits with the blessings of the Government Legislation and at the expense of innocent and defenseless drivers.

Hence please review the whole situation by the concerned Authorities for appropriate action and also for reducing the high insurance premium for the benefit of the whole driving population at this critical economic situation.

• Posted by: MGeorge • Report Comment