Following a change in the law regarding the display of car tax discs, there is now a 5 day period of grace given to vehicle owners to allow them to buy their tax discs online, providing they have applied for a new disc before the old one expires.

Colin Maddock, Head of DSA Chief Executive’s Private Office confirms that “examiners have been given an instruction to take a driving test on any vehicle if the tax disc is up to five days out of date.  They will not ask to see proof that a tax disc has been ordered online”.

They found that more than 20% of 17 to 20 year olds are not covered by a valid car insurance policy, which amounts to a staggering 243,000 illegal young drivers on our roads.

Many illegal drivers cite the huge cost of an insurance policy as being the reason for not having cover.  Yet the risks of not having a policy are huge, not just for themselves, but also for anybody they may be unfortunate enough to crash into.

The BBC reports the story of 21 year old Gary Street, who was hit by an uninsured driver at 30mph in Manchester two years ago.

“I was travelling through Manchester City Centre on my way to work when a car hit me from behind as I was stationary,” he said.

“I was sent off into the other side of the road, the airbags went off, the seat belts imploded. The car was in quite a state to be honest.”

Gary was left with neck and back injuries, and was in quite a lot of pain and out of action for over a month as a result of the crash.

But as the other driver had no insurance, Gary was left to foot the bill.  He said: “I had no other option but to claim on my own insurance which came to a cost of £900 excess.

“I lost my no claims bonus and obviously it’s costing me more now to insure my car.”

Whilst out on patrol, Police use ANPR technology (automatic number plate recognition) to scan hundreds of car registrations every few minutes.  The system is able to instantly check if a vehicle has a current valid MoT certificate, tax disc and whether the driver has insurance.

The BBC interviewed Chief Inspector Richard Joyce from Surrey Police, who recently carried out a joint operation with police officers from Kent and Sussex on the M25.

He said: “We have the power to stop, question, and in some cases, arrest drivers without insurance.  The consequences for them can be anything from a fine, to points on their licence to having their car scrapped.”

New drivers should be aware that, for the first two years of passing their driving test they are subject to a probationary period, during which they will automatically lose their full driving licence if they accumulate 6 points or more.  Their licence is revoked and they must apply for a provisional licence and pass both the theory and practical tests again before obtaining another full driving licence.  And the number of penalty points given for driving without insurance?  6 points – therefore instant disqualification.

22 year old Sam, from Kent, was caught driving without insurance when he was 18.  He said, “I was driving without insurance because basically I couldn’t afford it, the cost was too high.

“I knew I should have had it but I also knew I was a good driver and I was safe.”

Sadly, this is the view of many young drivers – they suffer from the “it’ll never happen to me” syndrome.  The Chief Executive of the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB), Ashton West says that the high cost of covering young drivers is not just about what car they drive.  In fact, it is usually down to the risk the driver poses on the roads.

“Young drivers statistically are a bad risk. They are many times more likely to have an accident.”

With so many young drivers on the roads illegally without cover, insurance companies, the police and motorists all say something needs to be done to tackle the problem.

Gary thinks he has the answer: “If insurance wasn’t so expensive for young drivers, it would encourage people to actually have the insurance.

“Then if you didn’t have the insurance I think the consequences of the law should be a lot tougher.”

Source:  BBC Newsbeat

• The number of people killed in road accidents reported to the police, fell by 14 per cent from 2,946 in 2007 to 2,538 in 2008. 28,567 people were killed or seriously injured in 2008, 7 per cent fewer than in 2007. There were just under 231,000 road casualties in Great Britain in 2008, 7 per cent less than in 2007.
• The number of deaths among car users in 2008 was 1,257, 12 per cent less than in the previous year.  The reported number of seriously injured fell by 7 per cent to 10,707.  Total reported casualties among car users were 149,169, 8 per cent lower than 2007. Traffic estimates indicate a 1 per cent fall in car and taxi traffic over the period.
• Child casualties fell by 8 per cent. The number of children killed or seriously injured in 2008 was 2,807 (down 9 per cent on 2007). Of those, 1,784 were pedestrians, 6 per cent down on 2007. 124 children died on the roads, 2 per cent higher than in the previous year, when the lowest ever child fatality figure of 121 was recorded.
• There were 572 pedestrian deaths, 11 per cent less than in 2007. Reported killed or serious injured casualties fell by 4 per cent to 6,642. The all pedestrian casualty figure fell to 28,481 in 2008, 6 per cent lower than 2007.
• The number of pedal cyclists killed fell by 15 per cent from 136 in 2007 to 115 in 2008. The number of seriously injured rose by 1 per cent to 2,450. The total casualties among pedal cyclists rose by 1 per cent to 16,297.
• There were 493 motorcycle user fatalities in accidents reported to the police in 2008, 16 per cent lower than during 2007. The reported number of killed or seriously injured fell compared to 2007 (down 10 percent from 6,737 in 2007 to 6,048 in 2008).  The all motorcycle user casualties figure for 2008 of 21,549 is 8 per cent lower than in 2007.
• There were 170,500 road accidents involving personal injury reported to the police in 2008, 6 per cent fewer than in 2007.  Of these, 25,457 accidents involved death or serious injury, 6 percent fewer than in 2007 (27,036).

In 2000, the Government announced a new road safety strategy and set new targets for reducing casualties by 2010. It wants to see:

• 40% reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured in road accidents compared with the average for 1994-98;
• 50% reduction in the number of children killed or seriously injured;
• 10% reduction in the slight casualty rate, expressed as the number of people slightly injured per 100 million vehicle kilometres.

In 2008, the number of people killed or seriously injured was 40 per cent below the 1994-98 average; the number of children killed or seriously injured was 59 per cent below the 1994-98 average; and provisional estimates show the slight casualty rate was 36 per cent below the 1994-98 average.

In April 2009, the government published proposals for a new post 2010 road safety strategy A Safer Way: consultation on making Britain’s roads the safest in the world.  This included proposed targets for achievement by 2020, compared to a baseline of the average for 2004 to 2008. The targets are published in the bulletin.

More than half of all new drivers banned in the first two years of passing their test don’t bother retaking it.  The law says after a ban you must re-sit a test before driving again, but many people don’t realise.

Road safety groups reckon many young people are getting behind the wheel illegally.

They’re asking courts not to send driving licenses back to banned drivers before they’ve passed a re-test.

Ollie from Essex was aged 17 and had only been driving a few weeks when he got pulled over.

“I got caught speeding,” he says, “doing a hundred miles an hour, so it was an instant ban.”

He’s one of thousands of young drivers who get disqualified every month for picking up six points or more in their first two years after passing their test.

“After the month ban, through the post came my driving license so I thought, ‘Well, that’s my license to drive back’, so I carried on driving.”

He’d been told he’d have to take a re-test, but because his license was returned after a month he began driving again.

‘More likely risk’

The DVLA has told Newsbeat 17,814 people have been banned from driving since October 2008 but, like Ollie, almost half – 8,196 people – haven’t retaken their test.

The Young Drivers Act, which came into force in 1998, was supposed to deter dangerous driving, but road safety campaigners say this shows it’s not working.

“It’s naive to think that all these drivers just disappear and jump on the bus, they don’t, many of them are still driving,” says Edmund King from the AA.

“I think this is a major problem, but perhaps it’s a problem that the authorities aren’t really aware about.”

“When I was 9 years old I was run over by an illegal driver,” says 25-year-old Leigh-Ann Johns from Redcar.

She had to have both her legs amputated after an uninsured, unlicensed driver mounted the kerb and hit her.

“I just don’t see the harm in putting back in for your test,” she said.

Back in April the government announced changes to the driving test and introduced the pre-driver qualification.

From October 2010 learners will have to choose their own route to a certain place during their test to prove they can drive independently.

There will also be a 3-month course rolled out across schools and colleges which will count towards learners’ theory tests.

Message not clear?

But these figures show thousands of new drivers are still getting disqualified and then breaking the law by not bothering to retake their test.

“We clearly need to make sure that we look at this problem,” says Transport Minister Jim Fitzpatrick, “look at these numbers and come up with solutions to solve this problem and we’re very happy to do it.”

The AA reckons one reason that the situation is happening is because the message that you need to retake your test if you’re banned in the first two years of driving isn’t getting through.

They also think people having their license returned by the courts before they’ve taken another test needs to be looked into.

The Department of Transport says there is absolutely no excuse for anyone to be driving without a valid license.

They say anyone who does so is knowingly breaking the law and faces tough penalties.

BBC’s Watchdog (which aired on 27th April 2009) broadcast a feature in which several members of the public pointed out that these things had actually happened to them. “The DVLA know where we live, when we got our licence and most importantly they know what we’re entitled to drive – or do they?”

Watch the full story here

One of the people featured on the programme, Jon Jones, has been riding motorbikes for over 30 years and has clocked up over 100,000 miles, having passed his motorcycle test in 1981.  Nevertheless, when Jon sent his licence back to the DVLA to update his personal details, it was returned to him without his motorcycle entitlement.  And when he phoned up to query it, he was advised that they had no record of him ever taking the motorcycle test, and unless he could indeed prove that he had done so, he would have to pass another bike test before entitlement would be granted.

It was a similar story for Jan Shepperd, who sent her licence in to have her surname updated after she married.  Her motorcycle entitlement was also stripped, and she too was advised that unless she could prove she had passed the test by producing her pass certificate, she would also have to re-take the bike test.  Of course, in order to gain entitlement in the first instance, she would have had to send her original pass certificate to the DVLA.

The DVLA agreed that she had passed her motorcycle test in 1998, but they insisted that she’d never had a licence, because she didn’t apply for it within 2 years of passing the test. Jan said, “I feel disgusted really. I’m saying one thing and they’re saying I’m lying. How do you fight a government agency when I’m just one person on my own?”

Even stranger than the above two cases, Watchdog also revealed that the DVLA doesn’t just lose motorbike licence entitlements from their records, sometimes it even invents them.  Oliver Dunn, who relied on his car to run his business noticed that when he sent his licence to the DVLA to update his address, they removed his entitlement to drive a car, and instead replaced it with the category A motorcycle entitlement.

Oliver told Watchdog that, despite never having ever sat on a motorbike, “according to the DVLA he’d had a bike licence for 15 years.”

When Watchdog contacted the DVLA it said: “It is vital that the DVLA protects the safety of road users and pedestrians by ensuring that only people who can prove they have passed the relevant driving test are allowed to drive on our roads.

“Errors are extremely rare – a recent check of 1,000 motorcyclists licence transactions showed that 100 per cent were completed correctly – but we thoroughly investigate all cases reported to us and do everything we can to resolve them.”