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Daily Mail, Monday, November 21, 2005
By Steve Doughty, Social Affairs Correspondent
Thousands of law-abiding motorists could lose their vehicles because of inaccurate new police camera checks. The cameras are being used as part of a campaign launched earlier this month to clear the roads of ‘rogue' drivers.
They check number plates against a computer database of those without insurance, tax or MoT. But more than half the information held by one of the system's main computers is wrong, according to details disclosed by Ministers.
The accuracy of the details held by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is only 40 per cent, they admitted.
And police computers used with the automatic number plate recognition technology (ANPR) are also unreliable. The Police National Computer's accuracy is 79 per cent and local police forces' databases are barely better at 83 per cent.
The glitches mean there is a high risk that drivers will be identified by the computers as among the millions without insurance even if they are fully paid up.
With police about to get new powers as part of the crackdown to seize the cars of ‘rogue' drivers and go on to destroy or sell them, there is concern that many drivers face sever punishment for doing no wrong.
The Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer also wants to introduce a system of widespread clamping to immobilise the vehicles.
Motoring organisations called for a halt to the use of the cameras until the computer problems are resolved. Mark McArthur-Christie, of the Association of British Drivers, said: “Uninsured drivers need to be taken off the road. But the new net is very fine mesh and it will catch a lot of people. Some people will be stopped because the system says they have no insurance. If they do not have their documents with them, their cars will be taken away. People are going to find themselves having to go everywhere with insurance papers. This system risks causing a great deal of resentment. The cameras should not be used until the system is ready. The Government must wait.”
Liberal Democrat Transport spokesman Tom Brake said: “This is an alarming prospect. Honest motorists may find themselves summonsed for offences they have not committed. We need to find out the exact nature of the inaccuracies and why they are there, If things are going wrong we need to know if the DVLA is to blame.”
The cameras, which are in use in the Wet Midlands, Yorkshire, Merseyside and Manchester, can read 3000 number plates an hour on cars moving at under 100mph.
Concerns have already been raised that the cameras themselves are inaccurate, especially with dirty or damaged plates. In one pilot scheme, more than one in five readings was wrong. Paul Goggins, the Home Office Minister who revealed the figures on a written answer to a parliamentary questions, said: “The Home Office is working closely with the Department for Transport to provide a method for electronically transferring data from the DVLA to police so that information exchange is more timely and accurate.”
He said trial runs ‘concluded that ANPR is one of the most effective technologies currently available to the police,' adding: “It has had an impact on crime at all levels and has also proved effective in intelligence gathering and post-incident investigation. Dedicated police intercept officers in 23 forces using ANPR technology during trials achieved a nine-fold increase in their average arrest rate.”
The number of uninsured drivers is estimated at between 1.4million and five million. Most are young and poor and many are migrants or asylum seekers, often driving deathtrap vehicles.
Claims against uninsured drivers cost £500million a year, which adds £30 to the insurance premium of the average law-abiding motorist.
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