was your son driving wrecklessly? No
was there a safety reason to pull the car over such as balding tyres, broken lights? No
were any of the kids terrorists? No

Why must our police force be complete and utter idiots with no commonsense – just issue the guy a warning and get the insurance sorted within a couple of days let him on his way. everything has to be done by black and white rules and there is no room for common sense in these rules – if we wanted a stupid police force im sure we would build robots to follow instructions to the letter. the whole point in having humans is to make conscious decisions for a realistic and fair outcome.

I have no respect for any police officer, the only thing they are good for is pointing me in the right direction if I am lost, apart from that I don’t understand what we pay for with it

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What a cheek, how can you blame the police for your son acting in such a stupid and selfish way.

What if he had crashed into an ambulance rushing a lady to hospital in order for her to give birth. What about compassion then, I wonder.

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Charlie Drake – Missing the point since 2010

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Whether he had insurance or not would not make him more or less likely to crash. Charlie Drake, if he had been in a crash and killed someone whether he had insurance or not the person would still be dead!
Sometimes life takes over from paperwork.
The police should use common sense and have asked your son to go along to the police station within 24 hours to deal with the matter.
There are people out there who drive with no insurance and no licence day in, day out, let’s use our police resources catching and prosecuting these people.

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Although the driver was in the wrong surely the policeman who forced him to leave children unattended in his car was too.
If the children had been found left unattended in a car there would have been a bigger outcry.
Sad now there seems to be no commonsense applied.
Surely in the days of mobile phones the policeman could have aided the motorist to renew nhis insurance within minutes?

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if your son in law had paid for his car insurance like most law abiding people do, this situation would never have happened, don’t blame the police for getting rid of joyriders off the motorway

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My sympathies go out to your family for the distressing circumstances, but car insurance reminders come through the post well in advance of the renewal date. There’s no possibility that your son-in-law could have been caught out unaware.

As for the rest of the story, I’m afraid its his word against theirs as to how long he was detained in the back of their car. An hour or more sounds like a gross exaggeration. If he feels that aggrieved, he should take his complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

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the police are doing there job like there paid to do. end of the story, as for the children not being safe. well they was not safe traveling in a uninsured car.

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What an unfortunate series of events and how sad that the insurance was overlooked.
How sad for the passengers in the car if there had been an accident whilst the man was not insured.
No, the police are not always nice, yes it does seem excessive for him to be in the back of a police car for an hour?
NO it is not unreasonable for him or anyone else to be prosecuted for no insurance. I think that having no insurance is and always should be an absolute offence. No excuses whatsoever. you are responsible for a ton of fast moving metal in a fastn paced society. That metal can do untold damage and injury. Other people rely on the fact that you are insured and that if you damage their transport to work etc that they can rely on the system to rectify the matter. No insurance is a serious offence and not just a matter of paperwork.
No tax on the other hand? Who cares? There are plenty of not very serious laws that are breakable without great consequence to the rest of society. Insurance should be paid in a diffent way so that a car simply cannot be on the road without it.

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The title “Jobsworth” applies here, although the children are legally permitted to be left in the care of a brother or sister over the age of 11 (if their parent considers this 11 yr old to be responsible enough to take care of the kids) those coppers involved should be ashamed of themselves!
Far easier to have simply issued a producer to the driver, then fining him later if he did not have current insurance they decided to mess about instead. If they spent as much time on the many hundreds of non insured boyracers that plague all us law abiding citizens on a regular basis, or possibly chasing up some of the other crimes committed on a daily basis then they would be effectively seen as policing. However, as is sadly often the case instead they are selective about the level of law enforcement they offer.
Those that state that the young man should be ashamed/punished/berated, well all I can say is, I wish that YOU too are placed in a situation as stressful as this must have been, and pray that YOUR head remains level and logically thinking at all times too! If not, then you are as bad as you claim this chap to be!
Sympathies to the family involved, I pray the little one recovers fully and is permitted to join the rest of her family as soon as possible.

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Of course ..

Not so long ago – before EU regulations scuppered it … there was a period of “grace” after the expiry of vehicle insurance – normally 15 days or so – that kept the vehicle insured “in so far as the law required it to be”. So …. you had a breathing space.

Now – you HAVE to renew it straightaway – and the insurance company WILL have written to the person concerned explaining this

(and should mention in the letter that it is a requirment of EU rules that no period of grace now exists)-

- AND –
…..also pointing out that you will be committing a road traffic act offence if you continue to drive the vehicle without renewing.

Point though is this ….

IF you’ve got/ recently had insurance .. and you intend to keep on going with the same company – then depending on how you are paying (by direct debit for example) would it not automatically keep going?

Seems like – as someone else has said – we don’t know the whole story.

And the REAL moral of this story ?

DONT deal with online sites and cheap deals.

They WILL leave you stranded!!

Go through a reputable insurance Broker who will look after you!
The broker I deal with would never let this happen as they always continue with, and renew the insurance until I tell them to stop! That is they renew it automatically and send me an invoice! –

You can then always argue a better deal later !! – At least then you are ALWAYS legal!!

You get what you pay for!

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just what you expect from this police force,if you were a illegal immigrant they would of let him go.as person who as moved back to oswestry after living in london for years,the police here just seem to harass normal working people.

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harvey @ 8 > They ARE using resources to catch and prosecute “these people” – they caught one, bang to rights. And are you suggesting that they should then have waved him off into the night in an uninsured vehicle after asking nicely if he’d come back to see them the next day?

Uninsured idiots cost me £21.56 extra on my insurance this time around. They have accidents – I have to pay. I’m happy to see them caught and booked. Especially when they’re driving on congested roads during icy weather in a state of emotional distress – a potent brew to ensure that accident rates, especially in their immediate vicinity, are bound to rise.

Forget the “non-supervision” of children outrage. The driver would have not been able to adequately supervise four children, (including a baby), whilst driving on this busy stretch of motorway. Far better for all to be stopped in front of the police car and under observation than in the back of an uninsured car hurtling down the motorway at speed.

Good on the police – keeping us safe and helping the driver to keep his car.

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is this really the right way to express such concerns? is it not better to explain these circumstances to the authority confidentially first? I was caught speeding once however having written an explaination to the police they acted compasionately in response.

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I cannot understand why any responsible parent would take their child out in a vehicle that was uninsured. To then accuse the Police of irresponsible behaviour when they were just upholding the law and protecting the rest of us is just shameful.

I don’t understand why any grandfather would want to broadcast such behaviour and then seek to justify it.

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Were the officers who stopped your son supposed to just let him drive off again WITHOUT insurance, on the promise he would get some the minute he got home? Insurance isn’t like an MOT, where if you are stopped on your way to a pre-booked test then it’s ok.
You can blame the police all you want for this but, at the end of the day and despite the undoubted strain your son was under, he was driving a car with his young children inside illegally without insurance. Had he crashed and injured or killed one of them, or anyone else, would you still have been so quick to criticise?
As another poster says above, the eldest child was legally old enough to be left to care for the others. I do not agree that the officers did anything wrong, they would have been wrong if they allowed him to continue on his way. They couldn’t, by law, let him continue without insurance and, in fact, most of the time if a driver is stopped without insurance, the car is recovered by the police and he would have ended up having to pay a couple of hundred quid for the priviledge of later getting it back.
Place the blame where it lies – with your son.

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Hi Andrew finch
Dont think that no car tax invalidates a person’s insurance. No MOT certainly would but I have been out of law enforcement for 20 years now. I believe you might be more up to date. Anyway not really promoting breaking any law. They are all there for a reason. Really trying to make the point that some laws have serious consequences when broken compared to others that are less directly consequential. No insurance is absolute! Too serious an offence

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If your son in law had crashed into my sons car with my grandchildren in, injuring them or worse, do you really think I would be interested in his excuses not purchasing his insurance? You complain that the police had no thought for your grandchildrens safety for an hour but defend your son in law for not purchasing car insurnance for several days. Your logic is bizzare.

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Perhaps it took an hour in the back of the police car because your son-in-law kept trying to make excuses?

If you can’t deal with the consequences of your actions, don’t do them!

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If the police were so concerned of keeping the streets clean of uninsured drivers, then why, after issuing a fine and reporting to court to issue summons, do they tell drivers to drive home and dont drive untill insured. What if an accident takes place after issuing the fine? I know in cases of young drivers, police normally impound their cars, but not with older drivers. So whats all that about? safety or revenue? I am not a criminal and do not have a criminal record, however I can say first hand that the attitude from a lot of police officers stinks. they consider themselves superior beings, they should remember they are there to serve the public, not treat everyone like a criminal. I am an asian educated guy, born and raised in inner city birmingham, full time employed, non drinker and please dont tell me everyone who comes from a lower working class area is of a shady background or deserves to be treated any less than those from privileged areas.

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Whatever the rights and wrongs of this situation surely just travelling in a uninsured car is no more or less dangerous than driving in a car with valid insurance! I don’t understand why people are commenting that he is endangering his children or other road users by travelling in an uninsured car??? Of course its an offence, which is the point but does your car become unsafe and not roadworthy when your insurance expires, or does the driver suddenly go from being a competant to unsafe?

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Jo, the letter writer is confusing two issues, the sad situation her son-in-law found himself in, and the fact that the police left the kids in the car whilst dealing with him. Irresponsible though the police may have been in dealing with the situation, the one does not mitigate the other.
No your car doesn’t become suddenly dangerous, nor do you suddenly become a bad driver just because you don’t have insurance. But thats missing the point. You have insurance in the first place IN CASE anything happens, none of us can see into the future and know what is going to happen on our next journey. Having a crash whilst uninsured would only have made a difficult situation much worse, especially if he was liable, because then the writers son-in-law would have had to deal with that as well as everything else he had on his plate at the time.

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