Uninsured drivers on the road continues to be a problem that can, and does, affect the UK population at all levels.

The Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) has announced a new injection of cash in an attempt to cut the criminal damage.

It has announced a £5 million investment to increase its work to get uninsured drivers off the roads sooner and make roads safer.

Multi pronged

Working with government, insurers and the police, the MIB has helped seize more than 2.5 million uninsured vehicles.

However, uninsured driving remains a huge problem across all levels of society. It causes  devastation to many innocent victims and their families. Not only are road user impacted directly on a personal level if they are involved in an incident with an uninsured driver, but the costs of dealing with the damage mean all drivers pay higher premiums as a consequence.

Premium service

For more than 70 years MIB has been committed to compensating victims of uninsured drivers quickly, fairly and compassionately. However, compensating victims is only dealing with the problem when it’s too late. By putting more effort into reducing uninsured driving in the first place, MIB is working towards a day when there will be no victims from these criminal drivers.

The MIB Board has approved the significant investment to scale up the work in getting uninsured drivers off our roads. The programme’s latest phase of work has seen them review and analyse data and current methods. By understanding more clearly where the problems lie and where the successes of dealing with uninsured drivers is working, they are finding new ways to work and focus resources.

All this will be used to fuel new initiatives beginning in 2024.

Getting there

“We’ve made good progress in a short space of time,” says MIB’s Martin Saunders, who is leading the programme.

They have expanded enforcement teams helping the police , as well as committing to fund Operational Tutelage for another three years. There is also more help going into comparing and analysing DVLA data in order to highlight vehicles that are on the road but uninsured. THis can then be used to directly con tact vehicle owners to encourage them to buy insurance and ully understand the consequences of not having insurance cover.

“But there’s lots more we’re going to do. We’ll have a big focus on leveraging technologies and data in our digital world,” adds Saunders.  This includes “utilising predictive analytics; better informed ‘hotspots’ and establishing partnerships with those who we believe can help tackle the uninsured problem”.

He also wants the government to introduce stronger penalties for those caught.

“We don’t believe the current penalties for driving uninsured are a strong enough deterrent. With this more focused and co-ordinated approach, there will be no hiding places for those who continue to flout the law.”

More than a bent fender

James Dalton, Chief Services Officer at MIB, says this new investment will help to achieve MIB’s long-term vision is to end uninsured driving for good: “Uninsured driving has huge physical, emotional and economic impact, so we have to do all we can to turn our vision into reality and make driving without insurance a thing of the past.

“We know there is a clear link between those who choose to drive without insurance and other forms of criminality. Burglaries, drug offences, violent crime – these are people we don’t want on the roads because they pose a real danger to all of us.

“We’ve got huge plans to test and trial new ideas to come up with the most effective package of initiatives that make sure uninsured drivers have nowhere to hide and we can get them off the roads before it’s too late.”