Topic ID 4465
I briefly heard something yesterday from Frank Whiteley - Our Chief Policeman in Herts, that Hertfordshire were having a clampdown on the above. Oh.. right, so the battered out R registration Black Range Rover Discovery, parked on Cross Road, Bengeo for weeks, with out of date 31.5.09 tax disc isn't in your radar??? If that's out of date, chances are the insurance is too.. As the Police regularly park on this road to stop illegal users making a right turn in the morning down the "rat run" why has it taken a resident to point this out... I can provide the number plate (learnt it off by heart) but felt it unfair in case a Forum member owns it.. So my point being, if there's a crackdown.. its bypassed us in Bengeo!!!!!
Reply ID 64124
just report it here http://www.dvla.gov.uk/onlineservices/report_unlicensed.aspx
Reply ID 64125
Thank you Mr Knight. Whats the betting the person with it will have driven it off before DVLA get to see this!!! Never mind civic duty done.
Reply ID 64126
I think the police can only report you to the DVLA anyway, the DVLA are usually pretty hot on sending you a letter if a vehicle isn't taxed or registered SORN. You will probably find the car is not properly registered so untraceable
Reply ID 64130
Whilst 31-05-09 is expired and, therefore, is illegal this was only 2 and a half weeks ago. The owner may be a local resident to Cross Road who is currently ill or on holiday and hasn't yet purchased a new disc? If the vehicle has not been used then the police using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) equipment for the purpose, comparing registrations against DVLA tax records will not have spotted it.
Reply ID 64131
They've got scmods ?
quote:
Originally posted by Woody
Whilst 31-05-09 is expired and, therefore, is illegal this was only 2 and a half weeks ago. The owner may be a local resident to Cross Road who is currently ill or on holiday and hasn't yet purchased a new disc? If the vehicle has not been used then the police using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) equipment for the purpose, comparing registrations against DVLA tax records will not have spotted it.
Reply ID 64151
Could even be they have the disk and not got round to changing it................. I know this is off topic but what was the point of monitoring people eating/ using hand help mobile phones/ doing makeup/ etc the other week if they don't do anything about it.
Reply ID 64152
Good point Marilyn, they may have forgotten to put their disc in, but around that area there are a lot of those "dumped" older vehicles that get moved around Hertford and as a "local" you get to spot them when they get moved around a lot! It looks like a fake personalised number plate as well.. But lets wait and see!!!!
Reply ID 64155
quote:If they have got a current VEL and haven't got around to changing it, they still commit the offence of failing to display a current disc
Originally posted by Marilyn
Could even be they have the disk and not got round to changing it................. I know this is off topic but what was the point of monitoring people eating/ using hand help mobile phones/ doing makeup/ etc the other week if they don't do anything about it.
Reply ID 64157
quote:If it does have a faked 'personalised' number plate that may be the reason the police haven't picked it up. If the lettering or spacing isn't exactly to spec the ANPR systems often can't identify
Originally posted by Drama Queen
Good point Marilyn, they may have forgotten to put their disc in, but around that area there are a lot of those "dumped" older vehicles that get moved around Hertford and as a "local" you get to spot them when they get moved around a lot! It looks like a fake personalised number plate as well.. But lets wait and see!!!!
Reply ID 64158
quote:ANPR is merely a tool. Just because ANPR doesn't pick it up doesn't mean that people can get away with not having a licensed vehicle. Owners used to get prosecuted for untaxed vehicles long before ANPR was ever dreamed about. If it has got a "faked" personalised number plate that can easily be checked without reference to ANPR. Additionally, all insurance and MOT details are now held on a central database. If the vehicle is not insured it can be seized.If it is insured, then the owners details will be recorded, so simply not having a valid VEL will not be a bar to tracing the owner.
Originally posted by throwbackquote:If it does have a faked 'personalised' number plate that may be the reason the police haven't picked it up. If the lettering or spacing isn't exactly to spec the ANPR systems often can't identify
Originally posted by Drama Queen
Good point Marilyn, they may have forgotten to put their disc in, but around that area there are a lot of those "dumped" older vehicles that get moved around Hertford and as a "local" you get to spot them when they get moved around a lot! It looks like a fake personalised number plate as well.. But lets wait and see!!!!
Reply ID 64160
I see no reason for the requirement to display a disc to be continued now. MOT, insurance and VEL are all able to be instantly checked from the datbase. The disc itself seems obsolete.
Reply ID 64163
Maybe Mr Shunt, but most Police officers will tell you when somebody doesn't have a tax disc valid, they might not have insurance or be legal owner of the vehicle either and if that is being driven around and it has an accident with you.. you will lose everything. I had a colleague to whom this happened to and it really does make you view it as more than just a minor offence. The car hasn't been moved in days and it doesn't look cared for.. I am not a police officer but its ringing alarm bells.. I hope someone of the uniformed type gives it a thorough viewing seeing as they are normally in that short strip of Cross Road in Bengeo ticketing drivers for "no right turn" offences !
Reply ID 64164
quote:My point was that since all the information is available from the reg no., the physical piece of paper is redundant and proves little. If, say, a twelve month disc was bought the day before the insurance and MOT ran out a car could carry an apparently valid disc for almost a year without the other two documents. The computerised system prevents that from happening as the insurance and MOT are all linked to the registration. I made no comment about how serious I consider the offence. I'd suggest you ask the police to do a simple check on the reg number. They won't tell you what they find, but they will be able to check the insurance and MOT online and confirm that the vehicle is not stolen or abandoned.
Originally posted by Drama Queen
Maybe Mr Shunt, but most Police officers will tell you when somebody doesn't have a tax disc valid, they might not have insurance or be legal owner of the vehicle either and if that is being driven around and it has an accident with you.. you will lose everything. I had a colleague to whom this happened to and it really does make you view it as more than just a minor offence. The car hasn't been moved in days and it doesn't look cared for.. I am not a police officer but its ringing alarm bells.. I hope someone of the uniformed type gives it a thorough viewing seeing as they are normally in that short strip of Cross Road in Bengeo ticketing drivers for "no right turn" offences !
Reply ID 64166
when i was young, and had my first car i'd bought myself, i drove for 2 months with no tax disc at all, not even an out of date one. thankfully someone at work told me - otherwise i wouldnt have realised! The police never noticed!
Reply ID 64167
Thats if the registration isn't dodgy and therefore you don't exist anywhere.. Anyway, why should I cough up my tax if others are abusing it and costing you and me a fortune?? My point of this thread is that our Senior Cop in Herts Constabulary in WGC has got an "operation" to deal with this type of crime and in our own midsts could be a suspect vehicle of the sort they want to stamp out. Lets hope the boys in blue do a check and find out whether its legal or no as its obviously causing a lot of problems in our Hertfordshire patch to them.
Reply ID 64169
quote:If the reg is dodgy, the police will be even more interested.
Originally posted by Drama Queen
Thats if the registration isn't dodgy and therefore you don't exist anywhere.. Anyway, why should I cough up my tax if others are abusing it and costing you and me a fortune?? My point of this thread is that our Senior Cop in Herts Constabulary in WGC has got an "operation" to deal with this type of crime and in our own midsts could be a suspect vehicle of the sort they want to stamp out. Lets hope the boys in blue do a check and find out whether its legal or no as its obviously causing a lot of problems in our Hertfordshire patch to them.
Reply ID 64170
quote:Whilst I agree that those details can be checked online, the displaying of the VEL disc does still have relevance. It's obviously not possible to check every registration number, but the lack of a current tax disc being displayed can indicate further offences, and makes it easier to identify vehicles which may not have insurance or MOT. To digress slightly, I personally think that driving a motor vehicle with no insurance is a serious offence. However, the Courts don't seem to support that view. People convicted of driving or keeping a motor vehicle on the road with no insurance often get fined less than it would cost them to insure the vehicle in the first place!!
Originally posted by shunt
I see no reason for the requirement to display a disc to be continued now. MOT, insurance and VEL are all able to be instantly checked from the datbase. The disc itself seems obsolete.
Reply ID 64172
quote:I agree. Insurance is the more serious offence and the fine structure reflects that, in that it is also a endorsable offence. It's unfortunate that motor insurance cost is so falsely inflated as to exceed the fine in many cases. As a quick visual flag, the disc does still retain some value, but I'd argue that the expense of running both systems side by side is no longer justified, particularly because the disc is mainly just indirect taxation. I don't mind paying tax, I just don't want too much of it spent on collecting it.
Originally posted by buzzquote:Whilst I agree that those details can be checked online, the displaying of the VEL disc does still have relevance. It's obviously not possible to check every registration number, but the lack of a current tax disc being displayed can indicate further offences, and makes it easier to identify vehicles which may not have insurance or MOT. To digress slightly, I personally think that driving a motor vehicle with no insurance is a serious offence. However, the Courts don't seem to support that view. People convicted of driving or keeping a motor vehicle on the road with no insurance often get fined less than it would cost them to insure the vehicle in the first place!!
Originally posted by shunt
I see no reason for the requirement to display a disc to be continued now. MOT, insurance and VEL are all able to be instantly checked from the datbase. The disc itself seems obsolete.
Reply ID 64174
quote:Similar happened to me a couple of years ago. I went around for three months with an out of date disc because I forgot to renew it and I had to go to the DVLA office in Luton to sort it out (and pay a £40 fine). The trouble is, how do you get to Luton without driving? I had to call the police, who actually gave me permission to drive there whilst my car was still untaxed!
Originally posted by codek2
when i was young, and had my first car i'd bought myself, i drove for 2 months with no tax disc at all, not even an out of date one. thankfully someone at work told me - otherwise i wouldnt have realised! The police never noticed!
Reply ID 64175
weirdly enough I never had anything from the dvla; I guess they're not so hot on untaxed newly sold cars! They can probably only cope with standard renewalls. You could always use the classic "Tax in post" post-it-note on the dashboard ;)
Reply ID 64292
The police were out last night at the top of Welwyn Road pulling over drivers - one officer in the road appeared to be checking disks of the cars going past and selecting the ones to pull in. Didn't get pulled over myself so not sure what they were checking for.
Reply ID 64295
As I said when I started this post, according to Frank Whiteley Herts Constabulary top dog in the police force round here, the reason they are targetting out of date tax disc dodgers is that there is a whole series of potential other car crimes being committed (no insurance, not legally allowed to drive and others) and that its obviously a serious enough problem, according to him, to have a special "task force" to clamp down on it all. If you pay your way and your insurance and all that you have nothing to fear, but as we are about to start the school holidays, I would hazzard a guess they are clamping down and checking that vehicles are legally allowed to be on the roads..
Reply ID 64319
I have seen cars clamped on Saturdays for failure to have a tax disc. I saw a van and I assume it had a list of addresses to go to where there were untaxed cars registered.
Reply ID 64394
Yes I have seen a couple clamped and I am not sorry. I do my renewal by phone, the DVLA send information at least 2 weeks prior to your disc running out and you can also do it online.. its not difficult and took my on a touch tone phone less than 2 mins to complete transaction. I am all for it, why should I be paying my way and others, think they somehow don't have to. Lets be honest, unless you really are away on holidays etc, etc you don't forget these things.. you look at your car windscreen everytime you get in and drive it for goodness sake!!!!