Windscreen discs on UK motors.

Atlantic Dawn · 21-02-2019 9:08pm

punisher5112 wrote: »

They had it running back a few years ago and it would show 500,000 as uninsured many even had cars taken that were insured so they stopped relying on it fully but use it for tax, NCT and markers such as theft or drugs.

Hyundai i30 can't fit the equipment so the only cars that have it were Focus, Mondeo, Vectra, Insignia, BMW 530d, Hyundai i40 and so on.

If that's true whoever decided to buy Hyundai i30's should be keelhauled for wasting public funds.

[Deleted User] · 21-02-2019 9:15pm

Squidgy Black wrote: »

You can't be stopped without probable cause, but a checkpoint is a completely different matter. There's plenty of checkpoints for drink driving across the UK.

It's the same in Ireland, the Garda can't pull you over without probable cause. But the definition of probable cause means they only have to suspect you of something that could be contravening a law or potentially committing an offence.

I lived there a few years ago and never saw a single one, was told by plenty living there that you have to do something like not indicate to be stopped etc, loads of people drink and drive there as they know once they drive normally they can’t be stopped. I read up on it at the time (not recently) and anything I came across indicted you can’t do checkpoints in the UK as they would be breaking the rules around not stopping people without reason.

Even look at the cop shows in the UK, I’ve watched vast amounts of them and never once was a checkpoint involved in one yet here checkpoints are one of the moat fundamental parts of policing the roads.

CrankyHaus · 21-02-2019 9:18pm

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

If that's true whoever decided to buy Hyundai i30's should be keelhauled for wasting public funds.

I agree but given how technology develops I'd be surprised if a miniaturised version of the system isn't avaliable now/shortly.

When you think about what's involved (decent camera, recognition software and a system that can run it, high speed mobile data link to national database) it shouldn't be impossible to have a handheld version for foot gardai or even traffic wardens.

No checkpoints allowed in the UK is BS. I've been stopped at one there before. The police there are just modernised enough to know it's a wasteful and outmoded use of resources in most circumstances.

ayux4rj6zql2ph · 21-02-2019 9:27pm

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

ANPR should be introduced across the country, any car spotted with no insurance showing should result in a ticket similar to a speeding ticket where the owner of the car has to declare what insurance policy covered the car at that time.

If they don't pay for insurance they sure as hell aren't going to pay any fine.

mickdw · 21-02-2019 9:37pm

I think the anpr system only takes insurance data from declaration of insurance made when taxing. The result of this is that anyone who has renewed insurance since last taxing will show up as not having a current policy.

punisher5112 · 21-02-2019 9:39pm

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

If that's true whoever decided to buy Hyundai i30's should be keelhauled for wasting public funds.

Very true the dash shape won't allow as they remove the fitted stereo and these are then put back when vehicles are sold at auction.

Another major safety issue is the sirens on most of the fleet from 2015 onwards where it's so low and in some cases it sounds like an ambulance.

The lighting set up is atrocious and dangerous.

On the front of i30/40 unmarked units they have a dash light and a blue led in both rear indicators which can only be seen if you stand at a 45° angle from the side of the car.

I will admit a very small handful got an extra 2 rear window lights which flash red/blue which were fitted to some of the traffic units(roads policing), also some now have an extra led block at each front top corner of the windscreen which is a great help.

I've complained and got a answer that it passes EU regulations.

I've seen so many near misses now it's actually laughable as people can't hear or see these cars and them driven at speed.

I feel for the drivers in the force having to use them but they should really be refusing to drive them.

The previous models widely used such as focus and Mondeo had light fitted to the side of the front bumpers so when lit the cars actually could be seen so much better.

Del2005 · 21-02-2019 9:55pm

CiniO wrote: »

It's not useless.
Licence is separate thing. Insurance is separate.
Indeed to check if driver is licenced, currently police would need to pull over a car to check it and that's probably like that all over the world - no way around it.

But way it works with insurance on the Continent is way more efficient, where policy covers anyone to drive, and therefore police by checking ANPR on reg number can tell straight away if insurance policy is in place or not.
Most countries also require policy to be active at all times when car is registered (issued with number plates).
That way is way more effective than Irish (or UK) way.

So essentially the police have to pull the car over to make sure that the driver is insured, no licence means no insurance. So the EU system is as effective as ours.

CiniO · 21-02-2019 10:09pm

Del2005 wrote: »

So essentially the police have to pull the car over to make sure that the driver is insured, no licence means no insurance. So the EU system is as effective as ours.

Not really.
As I said I can't be speaking for other countries, but in Poland if driver is not licensed, or drunk or does hit and run, third party insurance still works. So third parties still get compensated for loss.
Obviously in those cases insurer rocoups a cost of a claim from the driver. And I must say they are very effective in that, meaning there are known cases of people losing their homes and whatever they had.

Generally speaking in short system is designed in that way that driving uninsured is absolutely not worth is, and very uncommon. And that's how it should be.

Del2005 · 21-02-2019 10:15pm

CiniO wrote: »

Not really.
As I said I can't be speaking for other countries, but in Poland if driver is not licensed, or drunk or does hit and run, third party insurance still works. So third parties still get compensated for loss.
Obviously in those cases insurer rocoups a cost of a claim from the driver. And I must say they are very effective in that, meaning there are known cases of people losing their homes and whatever they had.

Generally speaking in short system is designed in that way that driving uninsured is absolutely not worth is, and very uncommon. And that's how it should be.

The police still need to stop and talk to the driver to make sure that they are insured through. So both systems run into the same problem in that the only way to be sure that the driver is legal is to stop them.

CiniO · 21-02-2019 10:30pm

Del2005 wrote: »

The police still need to stop and talk to the driver to make sure that they are insured through. So both systems run into the same problem in that the only way to be sure that the driver is legal is to stop them.

Well again not precisely.
Firstly police have access to insurance database, so they can check reg number and find out if there is insurance on the car or not - so no need to be pulling a driver over.

And secondly, insurance in obligatory for every vehicle, so once you're registered owner of a vehicle, you need to make sure there is insurance policy active on it at all times. Even one day gap, and it will show up on central database, and you will receive fine in the post. Fines are rather hefty (multiply of cost of insurance) so definitely not worth it.

So insurance is not an issue. Vast majority of cars in the country are insured and all drivers driving them are covered.

I must agree though that there are other offences which require police to pull over cars and check. Or do organised checkpoints - that includes detecting unlicensed drivers, drunks drivers, etc... No way around it.
None of these though have any impact on validity of third party insurance.

pa990 · 22-02-2019 12:10am

seamus wrote: »

Abolishing motor tax and increasing the cost of fuel is the only way forward.

We did that in the 80's
Motor tax was reintroduced not long after, and the extra few pence stayed.

The island of Guernsey abolished motor tax and now they have expensive fuel, and now their parliament are making grumblings every so often to reintroduce motor tax as they need extra funds.

CiniO · 22-02-2019 1:17am

pa990 wrote: »

We did that in the 80's
Motor tax was reintroduced not long after, and the extra few pence stayed.

The island of Guernsey abolished motor tax and now they have expensive fuel, and now their parliament are making grumblings every so often to reintroduce motor tax as they need extra funds.

Poland had a motortax in a form similar to Ireland, but abolished it in 1997. It was collected by local authorities (equivalent of county councils).
Government after abolishing it, decided to subsidize local authorities from money collected in fuel excise. But important thing was that fuel excise never rose because of that.
Until today Poland has one of the cheapest fuels in EU, and still no motortax payable on vehicles.

Henry Ford III · 22-02-2019 5:28am

Let's all move to Poland!

samih · 22-02-2019 9:50am

Something is seriously wrong with the system where you plaster your windscreen with various discs and still have to go to show your insurance cert to the Guards. I suggest we need to add another disc on the windscreen that verifies that all the other discs on the windscreen are a valid combination.

Why do all of the other countries in Europe manage with 0 discs and the police can check on the spot if necessary that everything is in order? And in many countries you can lend your car to anybody you trust without going through hoops. This system is just so labourous and inflexible.

swarlb · 22-02-2019 10:49am

samih wrote: »

Something is seriously wrong with the system where you plaster your windscreen with various discs and still have to go to show your insurance cert to the Guards. I suggest we need to add another disc on the windscreen that verifies that all the other discs on the windscreen are a valid combination.

Why do all of the other countries in Europe manage with 0 discs and the police can check on the spot if necessary that everything is in order? And in many countries you can lend your car to anybody you trust without going through hoops. This system is just so labourous and inflexible.

Who cares what it's like 'in other countries'... Why on earth do we have to be seen to follow what everyone one else does blindly. Which country should we emulate... Belgiun... Holland... The Papel State ??
Just accept what we have and get on with it...
It's a brilliant system anyway.. you just look at the windscreen and it more or less tells you everything you need to know about the car..
As opposed to the brilliant UK system, that tells you absolutely NOTHING..

samih · 22-02-2019 11:08am

swarlb wrote: »

Who cares what it's like 'in other countries'... Why on earth do we have to be seen to follow what everyone one else does blindly. Which country should we emulate... Belgiun... Holland... The Papel State ??
Just accept what we have and get on with it...
It's a brilliant system anyway.. you just look at the windscreen and it more or less tells you everything you need to know about the car..
As opposed to the brilliant UK system, that tells you absolutely NOTHING..

A system with a windscreen full of paper proves nothing unfortunately about the state of the insurance. You can receive a disc and then immediately cancel, just don't send the disc back. It does confirm the tax and NCT though if you can verify that the discs are not fake as they are not pay as you go. But why are they needed. The system should be similar to UK where you just get a fine automatically posted if you're spotted on the road without insurance, tax, or NCT. No excuses needed or required.

And the insurance system is very inflexible here in practice compared to the likes of Finland where anybody with a valid licence for that class of vehicle can drive any insured vehicle if the owner trusts them. So you can for exaple borrow your mate's van without an issue if you need to pick up stuff from the hardware. Of your dad can drive you car when visiting. Etc etc. Would be a brilliant system compared to one here I think. And the cops can verify on the spot that all is in order both with the insurance and your licence using their terminal, realtime. And if the owner of the vehicle has it reported stolen they can check that too if the driver acts suspiciously.

Dravokivich · 22-02-2019 11:11am

samih wrote: »

A system with a windscreen full of paper proves nothing unfortunately about the state of the insurance. You can receive a disc and then immediately cancel, just don't send the disc back. It does confirm the tax and NCT though if you can verify that the discs are not fake as they are not pay as you go.

And the insurance system is very inflexible here in practice compared to the likes of Finland where anybody with a valid licence for that class of vehicle can drive any insured vehicle if the owner trusts them. So you can for exaple borrow your mate's van without an issue if you need to pick up stuff from the hardware. Of your dad can drive you car when visiting. Etc etc. Would be a brilliant system compared to one here I think. And the cops and verify on the spot that all is in order both with the insurance and your licence using their terminal, realtime. And if the owner of the vehicle has it reported stolen they can check that too if the driver acts suspiciously.

The insurance disc doesn't stipulate the conditions of cover, while the insurance cert does.

samih · 22-02-2019 11:15am

Dravokivich wrote: »

The insurance disc doesn't stipulate the conditions of cover, while the insurance cert does.

Yea, so rather than having a disc you should just carry the cert. But again the cert doesn't proof anything about the validity of the insurance. It states that you at the time of printing had insurance for the car driver combo on the paper. But anytime after printing you can add more drivers or cancel the policy and not send the cert back.

redcup342 · 22-02-2019 11:19am

samih wrote: »

Something is seriously wrong with the system where you plaster your windscreen with various discs and still have to go to show your insurance cert to the Guards. I suggest we need to add another disc on the windscreen that verifies that all the other discs on the windscreen are a valid combination.

Why do all of the other countries in Europe manage with 0 discs and the police can check on the spot if necessary that everything is in order? And in many countries you can lend your car to anybody you trust without going through hoops. This system is just so labourous and inflexible.

Because the other European countries have mandatory Citizen Registration at a local authority, a mandatory requirement to carry identification at all times and finally centralised databases for Tax/Insurance and Car Testing

All of which an Irish person would go f*cking mental if they found out they could be tracked so easily.

samih · 22-02-2019 11:25am

The current system works fine for the law abiding citizens as renewing you insurance after pulling a cancel/not sending back stunt would make you uninsureable in the future. But the system is needlessly strict and there is no need for all the paper on screen. Times have moved on and these days you don't need to go to the bank anymore to withdraw money using a little book that shows how much money is in your account. The computers have internet now you know.

If any car used on the road had just one fixed policy the ANPR would be able to spot the scam artists and other law disobeying drivers so it would actually be a win win situation for all but them. And less admin costs and scamming would bring down the costs I hope.

CiniO · 22-02-2019 11:27am

redcup342 wrote: »

Because the other European countries have mandatory Citizen Registration at a local authority, a mandatory requirement to carry identification at all times and finally centralised databases for Tax/Insurance and Car Testing

All of which an Irish person would go f*cking mental if they found out they could be tracked so easily.

Out of curiosity where did you hear about mandatory requirement to carry identification.

I agree it was the case during communism times in eastern bloc countries, but haven't heard of any country in EU requiring it nowadays.

samih · 22-02-2019 11:34am

CiniO wrote: »

Out of curiosity where did you hear about mandatory requirement to carry identification.

I agree it was the case during communism times in eastern bloc countries, but haven't heard of any country in EU requiring it nowadays.

True, not such requirement. But you will have to be able to produce a correct licence when driving a car so in practice you would always have ID with you when driving, same as here. And you also have to carry the VLC in the car in Finland so you can show that you are or are not the owner of the car (in which case there will be checks made if you look suspicious). Although the last step is large redundant now for same reasons as why the insurance cert doesn't actually proove anything.

Back in the day the Finnish VLC equivalent actually had a space where you stuck the proof of insurance sticker. The windscreen also had a sticker for tax. Sweden had a yearly sticker on the number plate for the motor tax. But all of the above have been removed as redundant as there are better ways. And that's why the UK cars don't carry discs anymore either. As somebody here mentioned they could check online that the UK reg car didn't have a valid test for ages. That shows the system works even across the borders and the gardai could have done the same for that car if they so chose to.

Victor · 22-02-2019 11:47am

Lord Nikon wrote: »

Why haven’t Ireland brought in the ANPR system, which would see a decrease in the amount of time the Gardai spend at checkpoints(checking for tax/NCT).

ANPR costs about €20,000 per vehicle to install, but the scanning is only about 90% accurate. The database is large and requires substantial maintenance - more than 2 million vehicles (all Irish vehicles and foreign vehicles of interest) and up to 30,000 updates per day.

samih · 22-02-2019 12:04pm

Victor wrote: »

ANPR costs about €20,000 per vehicle to install, but the scanning is only about 90% accurate. The database is large and requires substantial maintenance - more than 2 million vehicles (all Irish vehicles and foreign vehicles of interest) and up to 30,000 updates per day.

20k sounds a lot for just one system, basically the same cost as the base car itself. Wonder how this compares? What's the total cost of a standard Garda patrol vehicle? The system probably is not much more complex than what's on an Android mobile but of course it's all custom non-consumer hardware. But there has to be big enough worldwide market for the hardware as it's coming quite ubiquitious at this stage.

[Deleted User] · 22-02-2019 12:12pm

CiniO wrote: »

Out of curiosity where did you hear about mandatory requirement to carry identification.
.

It is the law in many EU countries to have ID on you at all times. I travel around a bit for work and always leave my passport in the hotel and it always shocks people that I’m not carrying it or that we don’t have ID cards in Ireland etc.

CiniO · 22-02-2019 12:16pm

Ahmed Uptight Transportation wrote: »

It is the law in many EU countries to have ID on you at all times.

Can you name even one country like that?
Because I honestly think you're talking nonsense here.

I travel around a bit for work and always leave my passport in the hotel and it always shocks people that I’m not carrying it or that we don’t have ID cards in Ireland etc.

It shocks people that you're not carrying your passport on you?
What countries is that?

[Deleted User] · 22-02-2019 12:26pm

CiniO wrote: »

Can you name even one country like that?
Because I honestly think you're talking nonsense here.

Spain and Italy clearly require it. France is a bit of a grey area but the consensus is that if asked and you don’t have ID then you will get serious hassle.

https://www.spanishsolutions.net/legal-issues-in-spain/carrying-id-in-spain/

CiniO wrote: »

It shocks people that you're not carrying your passport on you?
What countries is that?

That I’m not carrying an official ID of which a passport is the only one we have in Ireland due to not having ID cards. I was very nearly refused access to a meeting in France once for not having a photo ID, the type of thing you would not be asked for ID in a million years for in Ireland. I’m not joking when I say the person could not fathom how I’d walk around without a photo ID.

CrankyHaus · 22-02-2019 1:13pm

samih wrote: »

20k sounds a lot for just one system, basically the same cost as the base car itself. Wonder how this compares? What's the total cost of a standard Garda patrol vehicle? The system probably is not much more complex than what's on an Android mobile but of course it's all custom non-consumer hardware. But there has to be big enough worldwide market for the hardware as it's coming quite ubiquitious at this stage.

According to Wikipedia it was developed over several decades in the UK from the 1970s, which matches the British interest in the surveillance state over that approximate period (CCTV etc). From the '90s and '00s it became cheap and workable enough to be widely introduced in the UK and then began to be adopted elsewhere.

As the technology and market matures the cost of the system should plummet. More authoritarian countries like China must have a serious interest in it; I see the Turks and Saudis have adopted it.

Isambard · 22-02-2019 1:22pm

The Gards need to be able to verify the discs aren't counterfeit and if there's a system to do that, it beggars the question, why have the discs at all?

punisher5112 · 22-02-2019 1:50pm

Isambard wrote: »

The Gards need to be able to verify the discs aren't counterfeit and if there's a system to do that, it beggars the question, why have the discs at all?

Parking enforcement use these also.

Dun Laoghaire rathdown as an example.

If your car is out of tax they even go out of their way to put a sticker on your windscreen stating no tax.

Windscreen discs on UK motors.

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