Across the West Midlands around six motorists a day are being slapped with on-the-spot fines for driving without insurance.<\/p>\n
The latest Home Office figures reveal 1,999 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNS) were issued by police because of insurance offences in 2018.<\/p>\n
Offences include driving a vehicle without third party insurance, failing to produce insurance documents to a constable after an accident, and making false statements in order to obtain insurance.<\/p>\n
The figures only include \u201con the spot\u201d fines issued by police. They do not include other motorists prosecuted for insurance offences.<\/p>\n
The fixed penalty notice is a fine of \u00a3300 and six points on the driver\u2019s licence. If the case goes to court the fine may be unlimited and the driver could be disqualified.<\/p>\n
Police may also take the vehicle and destroy it.<\/p>\n
All vehicles must have third party insurance at the minimum in order to help protect other people, vehicles and property in accidents that were the drivers\u2019 fault.<\/p>\n
Jack Cousens, head of roads policy for the AA says; \u201cThe number of drivers issued penalties for being on the road without insurance is very worrying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile some may be legitimate administrative errors, the majority will be people deliberately trying to avoid paying insurance premiums.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cost of car insurance can be a struggle for young drivers and those on low incomes, which can tempt them into taking a chance and drive in the hope of not being caught.\u201d<\/p>\n
Across England and Wales there were 74,572 FPNs issued in 2018 – up from 71,979 the year before and the highest number since records began in 2011.<\/p>\n
Again, more than half of those issued in 2018 resulted in court action – or 49,783.<\/p>\n
Adam Powell, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of home insurer Policy Expert and motor insurer Sure Thing!, said: \u201cThere are always a number of motorists who unfortunately don\u2019t play by the rules and decide to drive a vehicle uninsured.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, for some this may be an honest mistake; life may get in the way and some simply forget to renew their insurance policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor other road users, if they are unlucky enough to be hit by an uninsured driver, this can result in a fault claim for the insured party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is because there isn\u2019t another insurance company to pay out for the claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, many insurers now include an \u2018uninsured driver promise\u2019 to combat this from happening to innocent road users.<\/p>\n
\u201cMotorists should always be aware of their renewal date and make sure they have an active policy at all times.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the future, it would be great to see cars fitted with technology to identify whether it is insured or not, with the ignition being prevented from starting for uninsured vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Across the West Midlands around six motorists a day are being slapped with on-the-spot fines for driving without insurance. The latest Home Office figures reveal 1,999 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNS) were issued by police because of insurance offences in 2018. Offences include driving a vehicle without third party insurance, failing to produce insurance documents to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}