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Lizard wrote:

> Up the age of Driving a car to 21or 25, make all cars over 15
> years old pay treble road tax, and make everyone take their
> test every 10 years. Job done. less nutters, less cars, less
> highway repairs, I will never pay to drive on British roads as
> long as I am paying road tax and 75% fuel tax, I,ll get a
> tractor and run it on cow shit first.
>
>


As Sam said, if people have the vote at 18, pay taxes, etc., you can't then discriminate against them by not allowing them to drive.

As a former ADI I'd like to see the driving test made far harder, with re-tests for anyone who loses a licence.

I'm not sure the system could cope with compulsory re-tests every 10 years as the number of examiners (per number of tests booked) is at an all time low and the DSA is already over-stretched. There is an argument that senior ADIs (those who have had 4 consecutive level 6 passes) could help out on "driver awareness" courses which would free up some examiners.

As for the age of cars... my car is 16 years old, is serviced every 6 months and has never failed an MOT. In the 6 years I have owned it, it's mileage has gone from just under 42,000 to about 70,000. As a consequence of my looking after it properly, it's in far better condition than many "younger" cars I see on the road. A much better thing would be to adopt the continental system of displaying a sticker in the windscreen which shows the car is insured. Any car not displaying the insurance sticker would be immediately towed away and crushed. Now that would get rid of some of the crap on our roads.

why do governments insist on picking peoples pockets in order to change their behavior,a few months ago sir menzies campbell said on question time that there was a concencus in across all parties that to change peoples behavior you must tax them!,well thanks mate how about giving people an alternative first or having an incentive scheme where by it benefits the public to do something else,for instance older/bigger cars tend to pollute more so make the new smaller less polluting cars cheaper to buy in reducing their tax,at the moment public transport is no cheaper than using a car for most people look at the cost of using a train and there is no guarantee of a seat.i'm afraid this government see the motorist as a cash cow for their social engineering schemes

Spot on, Tommy. It's all stick and no carrot.

But that's politicians all over.


tommy dickfingers wrote:

> why do governments insist on picking peoples pockets in order
> to change their behavior,a few months ago sir menzies campbell
> said on question time that there was a concencus in across all
> parties that to change peoples behavior you must tax them!,well
> thanks mate how about giving people an alternative first or
> having an incentive scheme where by it benefits the public to
> do something else,for instance older/bigger cars tend to
> pollute more so make the new smaller less polluting cars
> cheaper to buy in reducing their tax,at the moment public
> transport is no cheaper than using a car for most people look
> at the cost of using a train and there is no guarantee of a
> seat.i'm afraid this government see the motorist as a cash cow
> for their social engineering schemes

I work for small company of 12 staff on the outskirts of a city with a population of around 300,000.

The nearest anyone lives is 8 miles away. The average must be at least 15 miles. One person lives over 40 miles away.

I live 12 miles away on the edge of a town of population around 110,000. With no delays my journey is under 20 minutes by car.
By bus it would be 3 changes. I've never looked into times but got to be about 90 minutes.

Even if road pricing cost me ?1000 a year I still could not find a job that gave the same net income with say 5 miles.

The issue is with the decline in real jobs with an end product in the UK people have to travel further to find work that uses their skills and hence pays a decent wage. Changing career at age 40+ to another that will provide the same income is not realistic.

What is needed is an incentive for local manufacturing that would reduce travel to jobs and reduce movement of raw materials and end products.

Take a simple example of a basic item -
There are Sausage Rolls in my local supermarket made around 120 miles away in South Wales. Are special ingrediants required that are only produced there not locally - no!
Hence why 1 in 4 vehicles on the road is moving food around causing congestion and pollution while some the drivers could be doing a job that is actually creating a product instead.

We could cut congestion subsatantially if the delivery companies would send the goods by rail, instead of by lorry.
This has been proved in Switzerland, where I lived for many years. But it needed legislation to force it through.
This won't happen in this country.