Road Charging petition - please sign!

[SirusVirus]

I dont understand how you can agree that this is a good idea, it is another measure to increase surveilance on our supposed "free" lives.

We are already victims of the "big-brother" syndrome, with the CCTV systems JPreston mentioned, and the use of mobile phone trackin, albeit with an appropriate court order.

If this planned action gets the green light it will be a farse, we already pay road tax, doesnt a part of road tax pay for road maintenance, we also pay council tax, which again a percentage is used to maintain highways, roadways and public footpaths.

This would be another payment each month that accumulates towards the growing cost of owning a car, including car insurance, services and reqular maintenance.
Again if this goes ahead, they will only taxate this scheme with green awarness in mind.

I have no problem with paying to do something i enjoy, which is driving, and im not anti-green either, i recycle practically everything in my household. But i will not agree to another cost to an already highly expensive means of transport.

[kalniel]

It would replace the existing car tax, not go ontop of it. Instead of everyone paying a flat fee regardless of where or how often the travel, you'll pay according to your use, so is much fairer.

[kalniel]

Why not follow suite from Switzerland and Austria by asking any vehicle that uses our roads to pay out "road tax"? That's only fair, after all. I mean European trucks and other vehicles on our roads are undoubtedly going to contribute to their disrepair, are they not?

Absolutely - and this system would make that sort of thing much easier to achieve.

[dangel]

I fully support a road system that makes poor people stay at home and watch sky TV.
Hurrah.

As for tracking us wherever we go - excellent - not the least bit Orwellian.

[TiG]

Okay lets start with the most important aspect of this system, The implementation. I hate to say it but the Government are not capable of A) designing an effective system, B) contracting out a clear concise plan of what is required.

Therefore the cost of said system will be enormous, what happens when the system malfunctions (loses gps position) gets put in a lead lined box deliberately.

What happens when the system says you went from London to scotland and you have no way of proving you didn't do that.

In theory its a wonderful system, it instantly polices speeding, so no need for speed cameras, you break the speed limit you get caught with the system. It breaks the whole accepted speeding is okay message and provides a method of doing it sensibly.

BUT the government is not capable of implementing the system at a sensible cost without huge holes in capability and will end up with ways it can be exploited.

So until this changes i'm against it correctly with a bulletproof 100% reliable system i'm also dead against it.

TiG

[GeorgeTuk]

I fully support a road system that makes poor people stay at home and watch sky TV.
Hurrah.

As for tracking us wherever we go - excellent - not the least bit Orwellian.

But it will be good for security....no wait it will combat terrorism...nope, I meant it will help the DVLA...hang really it will track down illegal immigrants...please listen it will stop fine avoidance and SORN misuse...and so on ad infinitum.

They will be ready with all their reasons, in fact I believe I can feel a brainstorming session taking place, know how...the stampede of civil servants taking the offer of a free lunch!

[Richh]

It would replace the existing car tax, not go ontop of it.

Really? Why so sure? This measure hasn't been passed as an Act of Parliament yet, so as things stand you have no clue whether Vehicle Excise Duty will be retained, reduced, scrapped or whatever. In any case, VED is just one form of vehicle taxation. You are conveniently forgetting about the other major one.

Instead of everyone paying a flat fee regardless of where or how often the travel, you'll pay according to your use, so is much fairer.

Erm, we all do that already. You seem to have forgotten about the "other" vehicle tax - fuel duty, which the Government have similarly given no cast iron undertaking to reduce or drop.

With fuel duty, there is already a fixed, unavoidable collection system in place, and the more you use, the more you pay, so the charge is directly related to your effect on the atmosphere. No need to spend billions on satellites and black boxes there, the collection infrastructure already exists, in every petrol, diesel, LPG, hydrogen or whatever pump.

Aside from giving the Government the ability to see where your car is all the time, the only thing the proposed tracking system does which the status quo doesn't is the variable road pricing concept, whereby you are charged more to drive on certain roads at certain times of the day than at others, with the principal stated aim being reducing peak time congestion.

The effectiveness of such a concept remains to be demonstrated. Unless business, schools and so-forth were to wholesale vary their "opening hours", peak times will remain a reality and people will still be forced to drive in them.

Anyway...

Therefore the cost of said system will be enormous, what happens when the system malfunctions (loses gps position)...

This is the key to the whole thing. Your black box will not lose "gps position", because it will not use GPS (i.e. the American owned, original constellation of positioning satellites that all such systems currently use as a reference).

It will use the new Galileo satellite constellation paid for by the European Union (with some investment from that champion of human rights, China).

One of the main reasons road pricing is being foisted on us, and being portrayed as "a good thing" by Government, is that the European Union decided some years ago that it should have its own, independent positioning satellites. As such it would not be held hostage by the USA threatening to switch off GPS, as it reserves the right to do at any time.

It could also make money from all the commercial applications GPS now has, but which were entirely unforeseen back in the 50's and 60's, when the Americans originally envisaged their system, and which was then intended strictly for military use.

Obviously enough, pinging a load of satellites into space is not a cheap thing to do, so the EU decided to guarantee the financial stability of the project by - wait for it - imposing road pricing on every European country. As such, each driver will pay an administration charge, built into the "per mile" fees, which should finance the upkeep of the satellite system. As such, all the commercial Galileo applications - handheld positioning units, in-car navigation and so-on, will generate profit for the EU which can be ploughed into yet further investment in the new accession States, along with butter mountains and the inevitable amount of corruption.

So, the main reason road pricing is being imposed is not necessarily because it is a good idea in itself, but primarily because some folks in Brussels decided that drivers are the perfect people to finance the latest EU grand projet. I daresay the current Government are also looking at the amount of tracking data they can use, and how many different things they can use it for, but ultimately it's all down to paying for Galileo.

[Andeh13]

Very well said Richh.

[capt_cornflake]

Well I'm in favour of trying to reduce congestion via charging.
Generally the only way you are going to change peoples behaviour is if they are discouraged from doing whatever it is.
While cash isn't the fairest way of discouragement, it does seem to work better than most.

To be honest I'm getting rather sick of the Motoring lobby constantly whining about taxes and fines.
If you speed you deserve to be punished - what's to complain about.
There are legitimate reasons to question the scheme, and bleating like that just detracts from valid arguments

For starters:

1) The governments track record on IT projects. No doubt project timescales won't be met and the cost of setting up and administering the system will spiral out of control. (OK obvious that one I know)

2) The point of the GPS satellites is that you can use them to find out where you are, but any communication is one way. If we all have a box in our cars that keeps track of where we go then they will somehow have to submit that data. How's that going to happen? I suppose for older cars it could be downloaded during the MOT, but otherwise? Also if the data is stored locally and downloaded at a later date, there is the risk of the box being hacked and the data manipulated. The only other way I can see is if they had some kind of hook into a mobile phone network?

3) I understand the whole concept of charging more for congested roads, and yes ideally people should be discouraged from using these, but surely this will just push traffic onto smaller roads which aren't built to handle that volume of traffic.

4) The civil liberties issues. Without some kind of real time link I can't see how it could be used to tell where you are now, but it could be used retrospectively. Where there is a reason to use the data (for example where there is already sufficient cause to investigate someone's travels) then fair enough, but as Charleski stated earlier, to allow grand scale fishing exercises is out of order.

Basically even if there aren't massive overuns and the project does run to cost, I can't imagine how such a system could be run without a substantial amount of the generated income being consumed by operating costs.

In my opinion increases in fuel duty are a much better option. Much cheaper to administer, applies equally to everyone, those with ridiculous gas guzzlers pay more...
Seems much fairer to me, and it would actually generate revenue to subsidise other things (hopefully public transport for one)

[kalniel]

Erm, we all do that already. You seem to have forgotten about the "other" vehicle tax - fuel duty, which the Government have similarly given no cast iron undertaking to reduce or drop.

I haven't forgotten about it at all - I think it's the best car tax there is currently, however it has nothing to do with where we travel - it only affects how much we travel and how much fuel we use - important things that should be kept to encourage more efficient cars I agree, but we also need something based on where and when we travel.

Aditional benefits would also be tracking, speed monitoring, reduced insurance premiums etc.

[chicken]

If you speed you deserve to be punished - what's to complain about.
There are legitimate reasons to question the scheme, and bleating like that just detracts from valid arguments

I do see that as a valid arguement, as many people are not happy with the 70mph maximum speed limit. Don't take my word for it, go and drive down an unwatched road like the M6 Toll and you'll see exactly what I mean.

It is not as if the 70 mph motorway speed limit was set by any sort of science. As we understand it it was an arbitrary decision taken at a meeting at the then Ministry of Transport in 1965. In 1965 a typical new car was a Ford Anglia with an absolute top speed of about 85 mph and much inferior brakes.

Cars nowadays are capable of far better control than anything available at the time the speed limit was introduced. Many people realise this, and therefore don't see driving at 80 - 90 as a problem, given that they are probably still safer than those people at 70 were over 40 years ago. Also due to the build quality of modern cars it is easy to drift up to these speeds on long journeys without realising it, so you may come home to a fine even if you weren't aware you had broken the law.

This is why I see it as a completely fair arguement to bring speeding fines into it. Can you honestly say on a 6 hour journey there won't be a single instance of a few minutes lapse where you end up over the speed-limit? All it takes is the people around you to speed up a bit too (say on a hill) and you may not even notice. Do you really deserve 3 points and a fine every time that happens?

[nichomach]

Of course, one of the major problems that this system will solve for the government is the expanding hole in the treasury caused by the fact that people will be driving cars which will become increasingly fuel efficient and consequently net them less money in fuel duty. As a side effect, of course, emissions will fall. The beauty of this scheme is that it manages the crucial disconnect of taxation from environmental effect whilst the government trumpet its environmental benefits. If you're charged per mile, then it doesn't matter whether you're driving a Hummer or a Prius - you're still going to get hammered for the same amount. Unlike the current situation, where there is an incentive to drive fuel efficient cars (namely, you pay less in fuel costs and the associated duty), the government have you by the short hairs even if you're consciously driving the most fuel-efficient bunny cuddler you can find.

I despise the general move to the surveillance society anyway (as JPreston above, I don't like the sudden profusion of CCTV cameras everywhere I walk, especially in light of the lack of evidence that they actually accomplish anything in terms of crime reduction), and I despise this measure as an extension of that surveillance society. It has NOTHING to do with the environment, or congestion - people don't have a choice about core business hours, or what time they have to pick up their kids from school, so the effect on congestion will be negligible - and there has been NO undertaking that any part of the current, and heavy, burden of taxation on motorists will be transferred to this charging scheme. It is simply another tax grab.

[nichomach]

I do see that as a valid arguement, as many people are not happy with the 70mph maximum speed limit. Don't take my word for it, go and drive down an unwatched road like the M6 Toll and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Don't bet on it; I've seen mobile speed cameras being used on the M6 Toll myself.

Point taken on the differences between vehicles then and now, though.

[madad2005]

The police won't pull you over if you are doing under 85MPH. Above that they consider unneccessary. I do thing the new dvla idea should be scrapped. It is just another way to track who is where in the country. Big brother is coming to bite us in the arse.. again! If only people would realise what's going on...

[G4Z]

It would replace the existing car tax, not go ontop of it. Instead of everyone paying a flat fee regardless of where or how often the travel, you'll pay according to your use, so is much fairer.

How naive? If you think they will pull road tax after implementing this you are dreaming, its been nearly 20 years since a tax was scrapped and that one was replaced by an almost as bad one we call council tax.

[G4Z]

I have read through a few posts on here and it seems as though there is a huge misunderstanding of what this technology actually is on the part of some posters.

To clarify, it will not use GPS or Galilleo (no idea where Rich got that from) or any in car boxes at all. The system is called ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) there are already trials underway with it in my area and the London congestion charging zone is an example of a similar system. These cameras are envisaged to be on every road in the country every couple of hundred yards, and it will be cheap as current CCTV cameras are all that is needed on the hardware end, all of the numberplate processing will be done in software in some data centre.

FYI :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat...te_recognition

and an interesting article on el reg :

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11...ment_database/

oh and regarding my stance on this, not in favor at all, it has a massive potential for abuse and to be quite frank will suck all the remaining fun out of driving, oh and it still won't detect outrageously drunk drivers but no doubt will cause a reduction in the numbers of traffic police like GATSO did.

If you ask me, congestion could easily be sorted by more effective town planning the state of the roads I see and the utterly stupid use of bus and 'no car' lanes makes some previously safe areas outright dangerous not to mention the stupendous amount of traffic lights in use in places where a roundabout would be much more effective and even in some cases lights on a roundabout (wtf??? who the hell thought that was a good idea???).