Picked-On Motorists

 

David Aaronovitch makes some interesting points in The Times and I suspect he's had quite a few of the motoring lobby sending you e-mails that criticise and worse.

In my view, somehow we've got to get a middle way that works.

I am against black boxes in cars for road pricing for two main reasons.

In the first place, as someone who has made a lot of money from computers, I don't believe that the technology can be made to work. Reliability must be absolutely 100% and unless administration is done over the Internet, the database would be a nightmare to keep up-to-date and police. There is also the fact as his newspaper pointed out a few days ago, that there are millions of vehicles out there, that are not in the system.

But my main problem about black boxes, is that there are millions of people in this country, who just don't budget. And how can you budget for something you don't know what it will cost. So if they got a bill at the end of the month for say £150 for road usage, they would be unable to pay it. It wouldn't bother me or probably you, but my son and his daughter-in-law live on a hand to mouth basis and would be unable to cope with the system. And they are reasonably intelligent.

On the other hand, I'm a great believer in schemes such as the London Congestion Charge.

If you take my nearest city, which is Cambridge, such a system would work well there, especially as the city has a very good Park and Ride. So to roll out standard charging systems for all our major cities would be a much more feasible approach. If the legislation was easier, I suspect that these systems would mushroom very quickly. (As an aside here Cambridge runs its Park and Ride buses through the city from car park to car park, which improves the system no end. The Norwich Park and Ride is a complete waste of space.)

I have also believed that we should put road tax on fuel duties and have a vehicle ownership charge of say £20, every time you buy a vehicle. To cut insurance problems, I would also put basic insurance on fuel as they do it in Australia. The effect of this would be to cut motoring offences and especially the serious ones considerably. It would also mean, I would have a second car on our stud. Occasionally we need a 4x4, but I can't justify the road tax. So an old Discovery would foot the bill to do perhaps 500 miles a year.

But we must also be more innovative in our use of technology and transport. I've worked at home since 1972 and have created two world-class businesses in that time. If twenty percent of us worked at home, this would cut a lot of road usage, cut carbon emissions and generally give people a better life.

As an afterthought, why not do what Singapore did and subsidise taxis. It would certainly help here in rural Suffolk, where buses are usually empty and cost us heavy subsidies.