Car Insurance. Uninsured Cars To Be Crushed
By Michael Challiner -
Are you one of the one in twenty motorists who regularly drive without insurance? You'd better watch out - your car could be heading for the crusher and shipped off to the world's biggest scrap smelter in China!

New powers now allow the police to seize, impound and crush any car found on the road without insurance. A pilot scheme was introduced in Durham last spring. Since then, police have impounded more than 1,200 cars. Of those around half have been crushed into cubes and packed off for smelting.

Operation Takeaway as the pilot scheme was known, has been such a big success, that police forces throughout the UK are enthusiastically polishing up their tow trucks. The scheme is now supported by a new national police database that's supported by the insurance industry. It enables the police to check the insurance status of every car in the UK whilst they're sitting in their patrol car.

Now if you're caught red handed without car insurance you're forced to hand your keys to the police at the roadside. There are no exceptions - this applies to everyone; it doesn't matter if it's just a forgetful mistake or conscious driving without insurance.

Then you'll have to get your skates on! You've just 14 days to produce a valid insurance policy to the police and collect your car. And other costs mount up. Before you can collect your car, you have to pay the cost of kerbside recovery (around £105) and the cost of secure storage - and that could easily amount to £15 a day. So, if you leave collecting your car to the 14th day, you could be in for a bill for £315.

And if you don't reclaim your car, off to the crusher it goes!

During the pilot scheme, the cost of crushing the cars was partly funded by Direct Line. They have estimated that Operation Takeaway prevented up to 2,000 accidents. And many of the cars impounded by the police were found to be un-roadworthy.

A police spokesman said, “ Uninsured drivers are often guilty of many other offences. Such as having neither driving licence nor MOT certificate. We are doing everything in our power to get these dangerous and illegal drivers off our roads”.

Indeed, uninsured

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