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Crime: Motoring Convictions

Answer

The table below gives the number of licensed cars there were in Great Britain on the 31 December of 2008, 2009 and 2010, as registered on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) database.

Year	Number of cars
2008	28,160,702
2009	28,246,470
2010	28,420,877

The number of cars that drove on Britain’s roads is higher than these actual figures for three reasons: (a) A number of cars will have been licensed and used earlier in the year. These cars could have been exported, scrapped or had a statutory off road notification (SORN) made for them by 31 December. In these cases they will not have been licensed at the end of the year; (b) A number of foreign cars will have visited Great Britain during the year. These will not be recorded on the DVLA database; and (c) A number of unlicensed cars will have been used during the year. The Department for Transport estimates that roughly 165,000 to 250,000 additional unlicensed vehicles in the private and light goods tax class (which includes all cars aside from those that were exempt from vehicle excise duty) were used each year on British roads in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The Department for Transport has estimated that about 2.8 per cent of the vehicles in the private and light goods tax class on the road in 2008 did not have a valid MoT certificate. This equates to about 610,000 vehicles. Estimates for 2009 and 2010 have not been made. It should be noted that many vehicles on the road do not require an MoT certificate, most notably cars under three years old. The department does not produce any statistics on the number of cars without valid insurance. The Roads Policy Operation V79 survey, carried out in March 2008 on behalf of Association of Chief Police Officers, estimated that 1.2 per cent of the vehicles stopped were without valid insurance. The survey did not produce a figure specifically for cars. In addition, most insurance policies make having a valid MoT certificate a requirement of the policy and could declare the policy invalid if the car is without a valid MoT certificate.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

12654; 731 c227-8WA

Session

2010-12

Subjects

Cars Motor vehicles Testing Road traffic offences Motor insurance

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk