DVLA Harassment in Monty

A van partially pavement parked, and with a police ticket. Why the ticket?

OK, the road tax expired at the end of June. And what's that in the background?

It's another car, this time fully DVLA clamped up while paveparked on double yellow lines.

But what does it's tax disk say? July 2012

Either they've just (belatedly) stuck in the disk and are hoping to be unlocked, or the DVLA computers are playing up.

Speaking of DVLA computers, someone has put in an e-Petition to make it illegal to park outside someone else's house at night. Having "space" outside your house in the inner city is some unrealistic vision: you park where you can. These people may live in some suburb where Avocados and Coffee Percolators are items of wonder, but the rest of don't run to the window and go "ooh" when a strange vehicle drives down our road, or start fuming when they are still parked outside at 10pm, forcing us to park five metres further away than normal.

Then there's enforcement. Will the police, randomly pick on cars, go up to the house it is in front of and verify that it is theirs? What if they dont' answer because they are asleep?No, enforcement would have to involve the DVLA scanner vans driving round all night.

But we're going to ignore that and worry about the implementation details. You can't use the DVLA address data as it doesn't handle company cars, second homes or students living away from home. That means a new table in the database for every car to have multiple addresses; a mapping of registration -> (postcode, house)+. Except that's a table that needs to be updated a lot more than once a year. What if you go on holiday? You'll need to update it. What if you go to a friends for a weekend? You'll need to update it. Which means a government web site to let you update the legal car parking spaces even from a phone. Which you can defeat with a satnav smart phone that gives you the location of where you are parked and automatically registers you.

No, unworkable.

Found: one van wing mirror

A wing mirror was spotted in Fairfield Road last week. It's probably gone now as anyone else whose van needs an MOT soon will have picked it up and duct-taped it together enough to get through the "has two wing mirrors" part of the test.

This is why it's always so traumatic when the DVLA hits Montpelier. A lot of people run untaxed vehicles not because the tax and insurance costs have to come after the RAC home recovery breakdown cover in terms of priority, but because the MOT has rules about the number of wing mirrors and the state of bodywork of vehicles, and it is impossible to meet those requirements and keep a car in Montpelier.

The War on Motorists will not be over until the government rolls out specific MOT requirements for different parts of Britain, of Bristol. In Stoke Bishop, for example, you'd fail the test for having an old car, anything less than Group G, and 2 wheel drive would only be permitted on two seater sports toys. In Montpelier, the wingmirror rule would be waived as unrealistic.Taxis would have a special "fail if the indicators and more than one brake light work" clause.

Give it some heart!

As we said yesterday, it was unfair that bicycles could carry along the flooded A4 Portway at full "race speed" while cars had to slow down from 40 mph -with even that speed limit a recent crime against commuters coming in from Wales, Avonmouth and Portishead.

Yet again, an anti-car council fails to recognise the A4 portway is a premier commute route into the city.

We do think that bicycles should slow down, not just because there may be risk to them, but to share the suffering, we, the motorist, must endure.

For this reason we are grateful for the heart.fm car, RY07DMV, cunningly placed in the middle of the bike path "reporting on a live news story". The car in front belongs to Bristol Council and they parked to one side of the path and behind some signs, showing unnecessary sympathy to people who do not pay their fair share of tax in the city.

By parking widely, RY07DMV manages to remove visibility for inbound and outbound cyclists, increasing the risk of collision, and hence the chance of a live news story being bigger than "puddle on A4"

We say: Give it some heart!

Breaking news: we can confirm that a representative of the Bristol Traffic Project will be at the Cornubia Pub tonight, starting at 7:30 to 8 pm, to tell off the cyclists of the Bristol Cycling Campaign and drink some of the beers that the pub has to offer. Normally we would demand, indeed expect unquestioningly that our representative would drive there before downing 18 pints of Hidden Quest Beer and heading home, but apparently the DVLA have just revoked our representative's license for reasons they refuse to discuss, and they will be forced to walk. We understand this is not through choice, and forgive them, as long as they do not get in the way of any cars trying to get over zebra crossings. We believe that this is more evidence that the DVLA is anti-motorist. In the US, even when you have a license revoked for Driving While Intoxicated you are still allowed to drive to and from school and work, yet in the UK once a license is revoked you are not even permitted to pop out for a few pints of beer.

Clamp-down in Clifton

Some people might be shocked by the number of cars in the Clifton area sporting DVLA-untaxed-vehicle clamps on the last Sunday in January

Not us. We know how easy it is to forget to MOT, to tax, to insure your vehicle. Especially near christmas time. Have you ever tried to queue in a post-office for a new tax disk when there is a queue of people in front of you is trying to post presents? Putting off getting a new tax disk until later in the year is the only action that makes sense.

This is why we think the DVLA should show some forgiveness here. But no, they drive round Clifton on a weekend, just to fill up their quote. But look at this picture: a cyclist, walking their bike on the pavement. Does the DVLA clamp them? Not a chance.

International Persecution

Interesting scene in Alma Vale Road, Clifton, one foggy December morning: a DVLA-clamped car.

Nothing unusual people think -we've seen them before. Which is true, but what is interesting here is that this is not a UK car. Looks like an Italian or Spanish plate, left hand drive.

Either it isn't up to date with respect to its homeland's taxes, or the DVLA have clamped it on the belief that it has not been back to the homeland within the last six months or whatever. If it's the latter: how can they tell? You'd need ANPR number plate logging at every port of entry/exit to the country, and some way for a DVLA clamping van to enter the registration number (again, ANPR without human intervention? ) into some database lookup that scans through all that data and says whether or not this car passed through any of the ports in the last six months.

Interesting indeed...

DVLA does Montpelier

Again, we see the DVLA at work in Montpelier

This time, only one vehicle is being penalized, R308FKO.

The owner of this vehicle is not only not paying road tax, by continuing to drive a car that is probably over 10 years old, instead of buying a new car, they are failing to keep the country's economy afloat. This is inconsiderate and selfish.

DVLA at Work

Here in Clifton on a weekday morning, we see the DVLA road tax vehicle auditing the streets. With its cameras on every corner and a computer with a list of every car registration number and tax expiry date, it can detect when cars are untaxed. We've seen them at work in Montpelier, clamping untaxed vehicles.

In clifton, DVLA van BF06WKS is making sure that this keep-clear marked corner, and the associated pavement, are free of untaxed vehicles.

a car in disguise

This little tactic from France merits attention: avoiding being towed away by disguising the vehicle as something else.

Given the DVLA drive round looking for tax disks, and the inevitable CPZ rollout will involve ticketing non residents, there's a lot of appeal in covering your vehicle over with a big sheet in the city. Owners of open-top triumphs tend to have to do this anyway, to keep out the water, so perhaps you could get away with it in the controlled parking areas.

The DVLA hits montpelier

This is York Road, Montpelier, with three cars clamped for non-payment of road tax. Well, the government needs cash. Lots of it. And as road tax isn't dedicated to car driver facilities, the way driver pressure groups demand, the government is free to divert the cash to nationalising banks and other emergency actions. A lot of cars are going to need to pay their tax for that, so we are fortunate that the DVLA vans are driving the back streets of Bristol, clamping one car

And another

And one more.

That must have made their quota for the hour.



From a data mining perspective, it means that vans are driving round doing a number plate scan and database lookup for every car they pass. What happens to that data? We here the police saying that ANPR will deny criminals the motorways, but is a secret goal to deny people who are four weeks late to pay their road tax the right to park on a Montpelier pavement?

Clamping cars has some major benefits over towing. Its much cheaper: a single van can have a stack of clamps it can roll out, tagging a whole street in half an hour. It also serves as a visible deterrent: everyone who sees the cars sees that you can't park here with UK car without a valid tax disk. They learn. And so together we provide enough money to keep the banking system afloat for another 48 hours.

It's poignant these pics were taken on the same day that the council cancelled its car towing contract. Without anything resembling a functional parking services organisation, the tow company was pulling in cash without having to do any work. And even when they did tow a car away, they weren't providing a visible deterrent: they were creating a new parking space. Maybe it's time to move on and come up with a viable plan.

Greetings from the DVLA

This is Fairfield Road Montpelier. All around cars are parked on pavements, over corners. But the only one penalized is the one whose tax disk is out of date. It is clamped, a nice visual deterrent to anyone who was thinking of saving 180+ pounds/year by, say, printing out a tax disk on their home printer. With the number plate reading vans driving around, checking every car registration number against the database, you will get caught (they say)

While clamping untaxed cars serves as warning message, what message does ignoring all other vehicle parking issues in the area say? It says: all we care about is your cash.