Sir, Your leader (Aug 15) rightly welcomes the change to the law which makes it a criminal offence to kill someone while driving uninsured. However, the menace of 1.5 million uninsured drivers will not be resolved by more rigorous enforcement.

Instead, third party insurance should be automatic and unavoidable, funded through a fuel surcharge. Any further insurance for fire, theft and accidental damage would then be entirely a matter between the driver and the insurance companies, and related to the value of the car and the driver’s claims record. To ensure that the taxpayer received value for money, third party insurance would be purchased from the insurance industry for all vehicles (whether registered or not) by, for example, tendering batches of licence-plate numbers.

The benefits of such a scheme would be considerable: pedestrians, cyclists and other road users would never face being injured by an uninsured driver; insurance for other risks would be substantially more affordable; the insurance industry would gain a further 1.5 million “customers”; the Exchequer would receive road tax revenues from many of those currently avoiding it; and the police would save time by not needing to pursue an offence which no longer existed.

The scheme would be fair: the more miles driven, the more insurance paid. It would also be environmentally sound, transferring costs from car ownership to car usage.

Denys Bennett
Welwyn

Sir, Having read with great interest your recent articles concerning the scourge of uninsured drivers, I am at a loss to understand why a system of insurance discs, as operated in the Republic of Ireland for many years, has never been introduced in the UK. The discs, of a standard format, are issued by authorised insurance companies and must be displayed in the windscreen just like tax discs.

If this were introduced here, traffic wardens (and the police) could then be empowered to order the immediate impounding of vehicles not displaying a valid disc.

The drivers could then only claim the vehicle (having paid a hefty per-day charge) on production of a valid disc. Any vehicles not claimed after, say, one month, could then either be crushed or auctioned, thereby paying for the whole system. If the driver takes out insurance and immediately cancels it (thereby attempting to retain an apparently valid disc), they are obliged, under pain of stiff penalties, to return the disk to the insurer.

I understand that Guernsey is introducing this system next year. Isn’t it high time to do the same on the mainland?

David Crowley
Nottingham

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