British motorists face spy in the car tax

ALISTAIR DARLING, the new transport secretary, proposes easing Britain’s overcrowded roads by spying on every motorist with a satellite. Compulsory smart cards fitted to all 24m British registered cars would be tracked from the sky and motorists’ movements recorded on a vast central computer.

Darling believes this could solve congestion: the computer would bill motorists for road use and charge a premium for driving on busy routes or at peak times.

The spy-in-the-car plan was attacked yesterday, however, as an unprecedented invasion of privacy as well as “anti-motorist”. A spokesman for Liberty, the civil liberties group, said: “You wouldn’t be able to go anywhere in a car without the government knowing.” The spokesman added: “Without proper technological and legal safeguards this could become an enormous snooping machine.” The AA said: “It is something that smacks of big brother.

The government would know where and when everybody in the country was travelling.” Darling’s predecessor, Stephen Byers, is said to have considered the idea “politically dangerous”; but in his first important interview since taking over the difficult transport brief, Darling was enthusiastic about the plan.

Revealing his proposal to The Sunday Times, he said a similar scheme was already scheduled to take effect in 2006 to monitor foreign lorries on British roads. This could be extended to cover ordinary motorists within a decade, he said.

“We are some way down the road to looking at the technology,” he revealed. “We have plans to monitor 450,000 foreign lorries — what is very new is the idea of monitoring 24m cars . . . If you accept that principle with lorries it seems difficult to see why you shouldn’t have a discussion about cars.”

He sees it as an effective form of “road pricing” — charging motorists for their use of the roads. Unlike car tax, which is charged at a flat rate depending on engine size, road pricing would be flexible. Motorists using busy roads would face bigger bills than those who left their cars at home, drove outside peak hours or resorted to less congested roads.

“The advantage of road pricing is you are guiding people down less crowded roads or to use them at less crowded times,” Darling said.

The AA is unconvinced. A spokesman said the organisation was not in favour of road charging unless motoring taxes were cut and improvements were made in public transport. “We strongly oppose any new form of stealth taxes on motorists. They already pay £36 billion a year and get little return,” he said.

Darling accepted that his plan was controversial but called for debate, claiming that to do nothing would mean being “condemned by future generations”.

“Pouring traffic in like a pint pot until you can’t get any more in is not a traffic policy, it’s madness,” he said. “Every motorist has got to accept there has to be some constraint.”

His department draws a distinction between road pricing and “congestion charging” — the method adopted by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, who will charge motorists £5 a day for driving through the centre of the city from next year.

“Road-pricing is likely to be a better long-term solution,” said Darling, who insisted he was not anti-car. He said he had been impressed by similar charging in America, where motorists paid to use fast lanes.

Echoing a remark by a Livingstone aide who criticised motorists for making “inappropriate use of road space”, he added: “You can make better use of road space. Even the busiest roads are empty for long periods. If you are a pensioner who doesn’t need to go down the M6 at eight o’clock on a Monday morning, we will charge you nothing for going at a different time.”

He believes motorists could be won over because “if we can get you access to a faster route, would you look at a different way of paying for it?” Darling revealed that a proposal by Lord Birt, Tony Blair’s transport “czar”, to build more motorways is dead despite No 10’s insistence that it is still under consideration: “We had an interesting exchange of views,” he said.

He is believed to have been influenced by Professor David Begg, chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, a friend since Darling’s days on Lothian Regional Council. Begg believes charges could cut congestion by 44%.

A Mori poll recently showed only 40% of motorists supported charging for road use, but 75% agreed if it was accompanied with a reduction in car tax.

This plan is presented as Big Brother gone wild, but it's actually about free choice. A system of variable tolls to support roads is a libertarian idea. If you want to use a road at a peak time and are willing to pay, you can. Market forces rule. The satellites and sensors merely save the costs of toll booths and the personnel to run them, plus the time loss of stopping to pay tolls or get tickets.

"If you want to use a road at a peak time and are willing to pay, you can. Market forces rule."

Perhaps you are right about the market, but the thought of government satellites tracking every move and location of its citizens is unbelievably frightening and totalitarian.

Oh, I don't know. In New York/New Jersey (and elsewhere, I believe, they have an EZ-Pass system where cars are automatically tolled by means of a sensor system. Drivers don't have to stop and wait in line. However, it does result in a record of when the car is at a particular location. Many drivers are willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience, and those who are not can still wait in line and pay tolls by untraceable cash.
The larger issue is a matter of how we concieve things. Everyone agreed after 9-11 that we should be vigilant, on guard for unusual events. Yet virtually everyone is freaking out about the supposed totalitarian implications of the TIPS program. All that program does is call upon people to be vigilant and an the watch for unusual events. What's the difference? How the matter is described and where the emphasis is put. I think it's similar with automating road use cost assessments.

" I think it's similar with automating road use cost assessments."

If we must have something to (automatically) measure road use, I would prefer a device that doesn't keep track of the movement and location of all citizens. Allowing such knowledge to the state, IMHO, gives it an omniscience even more complete than that which it has already acquired. Anything that threatens the free movement of citizens strikes me as dangerous.

I've got one of those toll booth devices in my own car, but it's voluntary and, though it may show when I've passed through a certain toll, it's a far cry from tracking my every move while I drive.

Also, I'm uncomfortable with the state participating in the free market and competing with the private sector. I know it does this fairly routinely (and sometimes to the benefit of the citizenry), but I think it ought to be limited as much as possible.

Agreed that some government intrusiveness in our lives is necessary to fight terrorists in our midst in what is really a war on our own soil. I used to oppose the use of facial recognition devices but can see where they could be valuable now.

The spy-in-the-car plan was attacked yesterday, however, as an unprecedented invasion of privacy ...

On the contrary, I think there's plenty of precedent.

The government would know where and when everybody in the country was travelling.

Now wait for the FR "TIPS" Brigades to come along and endorce this as "brilliant" and "one of the liberties people should give up to keep everyone safe" after all, one of those people COULD be a terrorist AND "If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear"

Also the ACLU would probably oppose it if it came to America, so it their bizzaro world where no one has a brain and your enemy always serves as a perfect reverse moral compass, THATS AN ARGUMENT FOR IMPLEMENTING IT IMMEDIATELY and a GOOD THING!

Now if only George Bush would propose it and offer a bumper sticker then the lemmings would rush to have it installed in their car and pay this new tax, because he's a "Conservative" and this is "war"

(/RANT)

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