UK Road Tax - Sign Petition by February 20th 2007

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The government's proposal to introduce road pricing will mean you having to purchase a tracking device for your car and paying a monthly bill to use it. The tracking device will cost about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC, the lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist and £194 for a delivery driver.

A non working Mum who used the car to take the kids to school paid £86 in one month. On top of this massive increase in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know where you are at all times. They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can expect a NIP with your monthly bill. If you care about our freedoms and stopping the constant bashing of the car driver, please sign the petition on No 10's new website

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

Please pass this on to anyone who owns a car/motorcycle. It affects them.
 
Sickening, Bloody Daylight Robbery!! If that happens I can't afford to drive my car and have no other way of getting to work!
 
If this is the same thing I heard about it was to replace road tax. Granted the tracking thing isnt good. But in theory I am pro being taxed on how much you use your car.
 
I do 35K miles by car a year , I don't have the option of using Public Transport so I would have to try and pass the increased costs directly onto my clients.

Therefore I'd be on the dole :(
 
Yes, I'm a car driver, but disassociate myself from the perpetual "us poor motorists" whingers. I am no fan of the Westminster government, but will support any reasonable move to reduce motorised traffic use, providing any revenue raised is ring-fenced to help fight global warming. Come on, we are hardly a mistreated minority (even though there are more non-motorists), but many contribute significantly towards climate change through unecessary driving. As for those "poor mums" driving their children to school: there are two schools near our home and we daily see parents dropping off their little treasures after a drive of half mile or so!
 
Somebody will know where you are at all times.
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If someone somewhere has nothing better to do with their time than to sit watching me drive to the shops and back, that's their problem - not mine.
 
Remember guys - this is NOT just about being tracked all over the place - there are substantial costs proposed for the charging. For example - they are talking about a charge of £1 a mile for "busy" motorways in the South east. My journey to work includes two of the motorways that they claim are "busy" - 20 mile trip to work - takes me roughly 30 minutes. Doesn't sound that busy to me! My monthly bill simply for my home > work > home journey would be upwards of £600 a month if this goes through. I would no longer be able to afford to keep my job - it simply wouldn't be worth my while to do so. My only viable alternative to get to work is 2½ mile walk to nearest station - train into London, walk from Liverpool St > Fenchurch St, train out to where I work. I reckon the cost of that would be somewhere in the region of 4k per year minimum, and I'd have to allow 2½ hours or so each way. I start work at 8am. There are buses but a) I get travelsick on buses, and b) the journey time would be even worse as it's three rural service buses!

I know from coversations I've had about the place I'm not alone in facing problems like these!
 
Well we're already tracked all over the place anyway by cameras at strategic points on junctions etc., and sporadic placements of ANPR cameras. It's virtually impossible to move in most town centres nowadays without being under surveillance from CCTV cameras. None of that worries me one jot until such time as I go completely loco and become a serial killer, as these cameras can and do figure large in convicting offenders in serious crime all the time these days.

Unfortunately it's easy to see that we can't continue pouring traffic onto the roads at the rate we are at present, and whether we like it or not we're gong to have to seriously consider how we use our cars and whether we really need to. We run one car between the two of us - it's inconvenient at times, but we manage. Just looking around locally I can see families running five and six vehicles and I'd be hard put to be convinced that all those vehicles need to be rolling every day. We've dropped into the mentality of just jumping in the car and going, and sooner or later we're going to have to pay the price.

My absolute 'must do' mileage is about 150 miles per week and I don't too often exceed it. What needs attacking is the attitude of those who use their cars who don't really need to, but it's far easier to impose a blanket charge which affects everyone... sucks big time! :(
 
Taken from another forum
If you were chancellor of the exchequer and needed to raise some tax would you think it easier to...

a) Raise tax from 5 or 6 major oil companies [who submit revenue to you on their customers' behalf] by adding it to the price of petrol, ie you pay tax depending on how far you drive.

or

2) Tax 20 million car owners individually by having them install an expensive spy in their cars and then issuing 20 million plus idividual bills depending upon how far they have driven.

Now come along this is not a trick question and should not be difficult to answer. 6 bills to oil majors or 20+ million bills to individual motorists?

Exactly.

So there must be a hidden agenda for forcing us into having tracking systems in our cars. I wonder what it could be?

Any ideas? Hmmmm. Better ask the government. Could it be that they want to know where we drive as well as everything else about us contained in the itsy bitsy chip on our soon to be compulsory ID cards?

Or am I just to cynical and paranoid?
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that would be 20+ million bills an month. It sounds like a stupid idea, expensive to setup, expensive to maintain and prone to errors. I saw the news report on this, as each bill contains each road you have driven on over the month, the itemised bills will be massive. As we will be no doubt forced to take out a direct debit for each bill each month, imagine trying to get a refund for any disputes ?
If each person disputes one item on each bill, the system will fall apart, just look at the Child Support Agency, they can't handle a thousand disputes a month never mind 20 million !
 
i dont like this idea as i have to travel to go to work on the m20, which would be a high priced road. I dont HAVE to do the job i do, but i WANT to, and i WANT to live were i do, so its MY choice. if this came through, the government would effectively put me(and a few hundred thousand others im sure)Goods and services, especially delivery costs)would increase dramatically, you can bet your arse insurance companies would find a reason to make it more expensive, and teh whole country would go to pot very quickly with such a large economic upheaval

i vote no.

i agree that we need to get the occasional traffic off the road. Freight could do with getting back on the railways, but i think thats the problem, public transport is not good enough.
 
The problem with increasing road tax to force people off the roads is that it's a blanket charge. The farmer in the wilds of, um, Wales (or something) is hit as hard for going to the auctions to sell his livestock as anyone else.
The thinking behind this is as much to reduce congestion as it is fuel emmisions - a less congested Britain is a more efficient Britain.

1.jpg

SOURCE BY PROXY - BBC NEWS

Remember, this isnt a system that relies on petrol usage, it charges on road usage.

Nobody is going to jump at the chance to be taxed through your lughole, but change is needed - and asking people nicely to please not use your cars unless you really need to just isn't going to work.
 
As I said on another forum some parts of that mail are pure scaremongering. That or the originator has not done their home work.

They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can expect a NIP with your monthly bill.
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Simply not possible even if it were feasible.
 
I was going to ask for a source on this recent study by the BBC, but I forgot in my post :(
 
Steep said:
As I said on another forum some parts of that mail are pure scaremongering. That or the originator has not done their home work.

They will also know how fast you have been going, so even if you accidentally creep over a speed limit you can expect a NIP with your monthly bill.
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Simply not possible even if it were feasible.
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You have a tracking device installed in your car which maps where and when you drove down a road, the government has a map with all road speed.

You take a trip of 30 miles in a 30 MPH speed limit and it takes you 55 mins. by default you where speeding.

And your fine is on it's way
 
No m8.

Right now many vehicles are already fitted with devices that track speed, called tachographs. The new digital tachos record an enormous amount of info including your speed but still cannot be used to convict you of speeding. The reason being the same as for speed cameras, they must be calibrated on the day the offence occured for the reading to be valid and there is simply no way any law enforcement/government agency is going to calibrate 2 million devices per day.
 
Until of course they change the law so that in car devices only need annual calibration at MOT time. ;)
 
They could change the law so that red car owners pay more tax than blue car owners too.
 
Well if this law comes in my job will cease to exist, it will be totally unfeasible to work, i have to visit many areas of the country to visit customer sites, i dont always get a nice convenient alternative to motorways, my mileage can vary from 20k to 50k a year, any journeys i can do by train i do, but unfortunately due to the fact trains dont run where i need to go makes that impractical !

The government needs to spend a considerable amount more on public transport and make it viable before they start making it unbearable for car users to actaully change their ways !

And i wont even get into parents driving half a mile to take the kids to school !
 
Steep said:
No m8.

Right now many vehicles are already fitted with devices that track speed, called tachographs. The new digital tachos record an enormous amount of info including your speed but still cannot be used to convict you of speeding. The reason being the same as for speed cameras, they must be calibrated on the day the offence occured for the reading to be valid and there is simply no way any law enforcement/government agency is going to calibrate 2 million devices per day.
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Hold up Steep - that's not an entirely clear view on Tachos there. The reason a tacho cannot be used to convict (in normal circustmances) on speeding is twofold. One - they are not a "live reporting" device - the information is recorded either onto a card disc via a trace, or in the new ones onto a digital chip within a card. However, via either of these methods it's not possible to feed the information back live to someone, and therefore it would rely on transport managers reporting their drivers for speeding - not going to happen! Two - the tacho does not record precisely where a driver has driven. For someone whon is experienced in reading them, who knows roughly where their driver has been, it's possible to work out where he most likely went, but pretty much IMpossible to get a 100% clear picture of this.

Remember - the Number 1 aim of a tacho is nothing to do with checking speed - this is secondary. The most important function is that it tracks time.

It is worth mentioning though that Tachos are regularly used as evidence to convinct drivers of driving without due care and attention, dangerous driving etc. Tachos are subject to two-yearly calibrations checks and between these the unit should remain sealed, so it cannot be tampered with.
 
come on people lets think realistic about this

the government have enough problems creating a computer system that can organise pretty much anything successfully... think how much processing power is going to be required for a computer that tracks 20+million vehicles movements continuously...... its not gonna happen.


and really, why bother with a petition, the labour goverment hasnt listened to the needs/wants of a people it was elected to represent on pretty much every policy they have implemented, what makes you think they're gonna start now
 
i agree with ian though, there needs to be a viable and usable alternative to using a car, one which the majority of people at the moment can use as alternative, trains and buses are great if you live in suburban areas or travel between major towns/cities, anything else and it becomes a nightmare.

also i doubt very much that my employer would raise my pay to coincide with any increase in the cost of living brought about this new scheme, id end up footing the bill myself out of a wage packet i can barely cope on already.

IMHO this whole scheme reaks of the work of a bunch of people who A) dont drive and B) live solely in the middle of a large city. these people take the opinion that all car journeys are wasteful and well there opinion is that people should just use public transport (they live in london which has a very efficient underground, bus and train system which to an extent can negate the requirement of a car in central london, without the vision of people who live in rural areas where comuting or traveling by car is an essential part of life as no other alternative exists.
 
Whoever thought of this idea doesn't appear to have thought it through beyond the financial benefits.

Imagine the system is now up and running and you need to go somewhere. You enter your destination into your GPS and it happily gives you a route using the cheapest roads available. Everyone else making that journey will do the same or something similar. The result is empty motorways/major roads and congested minor roads. Suddenly small towns are flooded with the traffic that's avoiding the expensive routes. It won't solve congestion it will just move the problem elsewhere and make it a lot worse in the process.
 
what exactly are the financial benefits? because from where im sat all i can see is that im going to shell out more and more money in taxes for absolutely no benefits to me as i can see them, country roads as mentioned will become more congested as mentioned because people will shy away from expensive routes, road accidents will be increase as more people travel on poorly maintained roads which are "cheaper" priced, id hazard a guess more pedestrians get killed by the increase in traffic to boot.
 
It's just propaganda. It's clearly never going to happen so there's not much point discussing is let alone signing a petition.
 
Joe T said:
Well, with everyone else paying the same fees, its not like anyone else can do it cheaper!
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Which is fine if you're in the position of being able to pass on the costs - what if you're not?!
 
Joe T said:
Well, with everyone else paying the same fees, its not like anyone else can do it cheaper!
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My job relies on the fact that I'm cheaper than training up an employee on site . If my costs rise then that could be out of the window & I'll be out of a job.
 
BBW said:
It's just propaganda. It's clearly never going to happen so there's not much point discussing is let alone signing a petition.
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You would have said the same 10 years ago if it was a petition over banning smoking in public places. Never going to happen.

Apathy over politics is the quick route to the loss of our rights and freedoms
 
whiteflyer said:
You would have said the same 10 years ago if it was a petition over banning smoking in public places. Never going to happen.

Apathy over politics is the quick route to the loss of our rights and freedoms
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Yes, I agree. Nobody would have imagined for a second that it would ever happen, let alone that it couldbe enforced. For the record I'm a non-smoker who isn't particularly in favour of the ban on smoking. If I go to a pub I accept that it's probably by default going to be a smoky environment. I won't be more likely to go to pubs because it's being banned!
 
This idea as already said will price people off the roads and put them out of work or make it too expensive to travel to work. I know of people who travel 84 mile round trips to get to work. Sometimes they get to lift share, but it's not always possible due to family commitmments, holidays etc.
When I drive to work I drive through town, lanes and dual carriageway at off peak times and the driving is easy. On the way home I drive along the A13 and M25, slightly further than the reverse of my journey to work but more economical as I don't get caught up in traffic, and there fore much quicker. I don't mind cycling during the warmer months, but I don't see why I should have to do it at 5:00 am on a cold frosty morning or worse.
The roads are only congested due to poor road planning and idiot jobsworths who get paid far too much out of genuine taxpayers hard earned money. For example most bus stops which were located in lay-bys in my area have now been paved over so the buses now have to stop in the road. Causing congestion and raised pollution. A dual carriageway I use for work has been altered where the inside lanes are for buses and taxis only. Yet there are very few buses that use the road anyway so what is the point. Also the stretch of road has had traffic lights put in to help non existent (or very rare)traffic get out of side turnings. If they must have traffic lights why not install those that sense whether a car is waiting or not. Cuts down on pollution and wasted fuel costs. The main source of congestion on the M25 is the tolls for the Dartford crossing. Two tunnels and a bridge, for those that don't know, The cost of building these has been recouped years ago, the bridge which was last to be built was opened in 1991. It was promised that once they had paid for themselves in tolls that the toll would be scrapped. But the tolls still stand and the Government gets on average £50million a year in clear profit. Kent and Essex County Councils would like the money back by the way as it really ought to go to them and they want to build another crossing anyway to lighten the load on the M25.
This proposal is just another stealth tax to hit the motorist. How do the government propose to collect the tax off foreign visitors in their cars by the way?
 
The Dartford crossing is managed and maintained by Le Crossing I believe - the same people as the Channel Tunnel? Certainly this is what's on the receipts for the wide load fees my drivers have to pay on occasion. £42 a time for loads above 9'! These. by the way, do NOT require escorting over the bridge meaning that there are no additional costs involved!)
 
You should take the Skye bridge as an example, the locals and users of the bridge made such a fuss protesting etc. at the charges the government finally stepped in and bought out the contract, made the crossing free.

Man the barricades! refuse to use the crossing!
 
Steep said:
You should take the Skye bridge as an example, the locals and users of the bridge made such a fuss protesting etc. at the charges the government finally stepped in and bought out the contract, made the crossing free.

Man the barricades! refuse to use the crossing!
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Would that have been your Scottish government or our Scottish Government.
 
Witch said:
The Dartford crossing is managed and maintained by Le Crossing I believe - the same people as the Channel Tunnel? Certainly this is what's on the receipts for the wide load fees my drivers have to pay on occasion. £42 a time for loads above 9'! These. by the way, do NOT require escorting over the bridge meaning that there are no additional costs involved!)
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are they also the same people that charge you to get into wales? yet getting out is free???? seems a bit backwards to me, surely they should charge people to get out once they'd been in, realised it was **** and want to leave..
 
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