If you’re 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!

New rules now enable the police to seize, impound and crush any car found being driven without insurance. Since a pilot scheme was introduced in spring last year, the police have impounded more than 1,200 cars and over 650 have been crushed into cubes. Operation Takeaway, as the pilot was called, has been so successful that police forces throughout the UK are rolling out the scheme supported by a revised database that enables them to check the insurance status of every car in the UK.

Now if you’re caught driving without insurance you must hand the car keys to the police at the roadside. This applies to everyone – it doesn’t matter whether the lack of insurance is just an inadvertent mistake or a conscious evasion.

You then have 14 days to show the police a valid insurance policy and recover your car. And other costs will mount up. You’ll have to pay the cost of the police recovering your car (circa £105) plus the secure storage that could easily cost £15 per day. So, if you recovered your car at the last minute, you could be in for a bill from the police for £315.

And if you don’t reclaim the car, it can be crushed into a metal cube and shipped off to a scrap smelter in the Far East.

During Operation Takeaway, the crushing of the cars was part funded by Direct Line. They have estimated that the scheme has prevented as many as 2,000 accidents.

And the Durham police who operated the test, found that many of the cars they impounded were not roadworthy. A spokesman for the police said, “ Uninsured drivers are often guilty of many other offences, such as having neither MOT certificate or driving licence. We are doing everything in our power to get these illegal, dangerous drivers off our roads”.

The problem of uninsured drivers is much bigger than many of us think. According to the Department of Transport 1 in 20 motorists regularly drive without insurance. Research from the Association of British Insurers also shows that it’s these drivers who are amongst the most dangerous on the roads. They are three times more likely to be convicted of driving without due care and attention and, on average, cause one accident every six months.

And who pays for the uninsured accidents? Law abiding motorists. The average car insurance premium includes an additional £30 to cover the cost of damage caused by the uninsured. That adds up to £500 million per year paid out by the UK’s law-abiding motorists!

But that’s not the end of it. If uninsured car is in collision with you, it’s still recorded on your policy as “fault claim”. This means you’ll have to pay the excess on your policy and, unless you’ve got Claims Protection on your policy, your no-claims bonus will be hit. Over a two-year period the loss of bonus could easily cost you £275 in extra premiums.

The move to crush cars has been warmly welcomed by the Association of British Insurers. They have long criticised the leniency of punishment handed out to uninsured drivers but they still want the courts to get tougher. Offenders are typically fined between £150 and £200 with time to pay and this is appreciably less than the average car insurance premium – this cannot be true justice!

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