One in five motorists have no car insurance

Jan 26 2008 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THE menace of uninsured drivers was exposed today.

More than one in five cars in Huddersfield town centre are not insured.

The West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority says 22.9% of vehicles in the HD1 postcode area – which also includes Lockwood, Marsh and Paddock – are not covered.

The area is ninth in a list of the top 20 worst in West Yorkshire.

The authority has also released a league table of hotspots for crashes involving young people – 21 to 29-year-olds – in which someone was injured.

It features two Kirklees postcodes.

There were 192 such crashes in the WF12 area between 2002 and 2006.

The area includes Dewsbury, Savile Town, Shaw Cross, Chickenley, Thornhill and Thornhill Lees.

There were 191 in WF13, which includes Dewsbury Moor, Ravensthorpe and Staincliffe.

The figures put the two areas 10th and 11th respectively in the table.

The worst postcode areas for both uninsured cars and road crashes involving young people are in Bradford.

In BD3 57.3% of vehicles were not insured.

In BD8 there were 351 injury-causing crashes between 2002 and 2006.

The figures come in a report on the Safer Roads Partnership.

The report said uninsured vehicles and young drivers were both key factors in road problems. It said: “Both these factors are indicative of increasing problems that contribute excessively to road crashes and injury.”

Clr Martyn Bolt, Kirklees Council’s Cabinet member for transport, said uninsured vehicles were a menace.

He said: “There’s no way of knowing if they are roadworthy and if they are involved in an accident there’s no way of forcing the driver to pay up except for civil litigation.

“If these vehicles present a threat we want them out of the way.

“If it was your child being knocked down it would be upsetting enough. But then to find out the car was uninsured would be a double whammy.”

Clr Bolt added that the figures for accidents involving young drivers showed the need for a police crackdown.

“There will be calls for speed bumps and cameras in areas where there are high incidences of accidents, but it’s clear we need police enforcement,” he said.

“I don’t want a situation where every driver in Kirklees is having to go over speed humps the whole time because of a minority of bad drivers.

“There are three areas on these lists that are within Kirklees. Let’s target them and send out the message that we won’t tolerate wanton law-breaking.”