Britain's "beleaguered" motorists slam cost of driving - but are more car dependent than ever, says RAC

I wonder how many times this spineless government will have to cancel fuel tax rises (while closing libraries and surestart centres) before the whining car lobbyists get down off their soap box?

I say this as the owner and driver of a car.

All road users have minorities within them who are idiots, or who hold ignorant or bigoted views.

General taxation will probably always be used to fund roads, but supplementing this with things like fuel duty would clearly be acceptable to drivers, in fact they want it. It would seem fair to the majority of road users

Its only a few people on special interest forums, eg road cc or whatever the equivalent is for lorry drivers, ,who might put inter-road-user divisions and and petty conflicts ahead of sensible, improved and increased funding for road maintenance.

I've hit potholes in both my car and on my bike. From both perspectives I know how crap it is.

Most serious cyclists also drive. So please everyone stop creating more division and antagonism simply based on prejudice related to mode of transport used. It is, in the main, artificial and unhelpful

I wouldn't say 'cutting your nose off to spite your face', don't forget we're all in this together and we all want better roads.

If the trade off for better roads is that those drivers with extreme views are then literally told "you pay for this now" then it can only be a bad thing for us. Not them.

Do you really want to have a situation where you can't say "there's no such thing as road tax" etc. to people when they start ranting out of their window at you? This is the exact reason it was disbanded in 1937.

What they could do is increase alcohol and cigarette taxes, they'll always sell well. Then just publicly ring-fence some of that?

cool, cheers for clarifying.

another point: since road repairs are necessary due to vehicle damage, and the amount of damage seems to be proportional to axle weight raised to the fourth power, should we not be charging haulage companies around 10,000 times as much as motorists to use the roads? meanwhile, bikes would pay 1/10,000th of what cars pay

We carry out pnc checks regularly on cars which are driving a bit erratically, full of young uns, or just an old banger.

The ANPR system basically constantly runs and if a vehicle drives past in either direction which does not have an mot, ins, stolen or just one of note used by local toe rags it comes up on the screen in the car and the cop can see what it is and if necessary stop them.

So for example mrs canny body who forgets to renew her ins will get flagged up and stopped just like anyone else.

For those who dont know ANPR - Automated Number Plate Recognition.

long winded is good, thanks for explaining that system. if you stayed out of trouble though, would you ever be subject to a PNC check? VED is good because everyone gets chased up, every year. not everyone pays, which i guess would be the major benefit of fuel-based taxation. you don't pay, you don't drive. it still shouldn't be ringfenced though, ever.

Dave, you could be right about people's habits.

As for insurance the dvla have no control over this other than no isurance / mot produced then no vel. Most insurance companies have joined the scheme whereby they update the PNC which shows full ins, mot's and authorised drivers with dob. The PNC is the primary tool used by Police to check your vehicle through officer checks and the anpr cameras fitted to most Police vehicles.

If a vehicle gets flagged up via the anpr or the officer check for no insurance we can also contact MIB (not men in black ) who have a computerised list of all insurers and they can check to see if the policy has just been taken out within the last few days and is yet to be updated on the PNC.

Sorry if thats long winded, thought it might explain things a bit better. But i digress, your original comment about there being no viable alternative is spot on. There is nothing else other than local trams / undeground / metro systems which are purely for short distances. Trains and planes are far to expensive for long distances and the bus systems are to slow.

Sure they should ring fence fuel duty and vehicle excise duty. Use it to pay for the cost of lung diseases, global warming and obesity.

In my opinion scrap the excise licence and add the cost onto petrol. It means the people who use the roads the most pay for the roads through tax on fuel.

Its been a long standing bugbear of mine that people, like my parents, who do about 2k miles a year in their car pay the same as and sometimes more in excise duty than a salesman or similar ilk who does 40k a year ?

If it was added to the fuel costs then car users would surely think twice about nipping to the shops, dropping the kids off at school etc.

And it would cut out the added cost of producing the excise licence and we all know there are a lot of people who dont even bother to get an excise licence !

I think what 'cavasta' is getting at is the whole ownership problem. If we (car drivers) are made to feel that we are actually paying for the roads then the whole "cyclists shouldn't be on the road, I pay for them you don't" situation has a strong back bone.

The reason cycling has the little bit of legitimacy that it does is due to the fact that 'road tax' doesn't exist and when we pay our VED we're paying for the right to use our vehicle and not directly for the road.

Directly using fuel and excise duty to fund the road network would quickly sort out the state of the roads, but would cause massive problems. People with bigger, more expensive VED-rated vehicles would think that they own more of the road than somebody in, say- a Smart car. And haulage companies with their massive costs would run riot.

It won't happen, they need to keep the application of funds hidden.

I run a 10yr old car, £90 for a full tank of diesel per month, £22 insurance, £11 for excise and i put away another £10 for tyre replacements etc (all per month). Not to mention the lump sum if something goes wrong.

So all in all it costs me £133.00 per month to run a car which is already paid for as no finance or loan. If i had to replace my car with a one of the same model etc it would be £27,000.00 (audi a4 2.0tdi) which would then be something stupid like a £500 per month loan.

All in all its bloody expensive hence why i ride my bike to work more often than not which ultimately saves me about £40 per month.

I am almost in tears; but, my driving costs have plummeted in the last few years. I have simply sold one of my cars and now I am off to 'cycle' to work. Maybe if they put fuel duty on cream buns
But the roads round here are falling to bits and all I read about is that we should build more roads.
Bearing in mind that most roads are/were paid for by borrowing money -from where?- (meaning that many roads have not even been paid for yet)it would be interesting to know how much our roads actually cost this country. Even before you take into account the cost of thousands of deaths and serious injuries per year

Isnt there acres of research to show that the cost of owning a car has actually dropped over the years?
Im sure i could reference it and provide a link but frankly i cant be bothered.
For such a oppressed part of society their seems to be an awful lot of people still doing it. Driving i mean.

As Carlton says - for the cost of a brand new (unnecessary) by pass most local authorities could probably fix their entire road network.

Roads are too congested, hey? And making motoring cheaper will fix that how?

As amply evidenced by William Plowden's 'The Motor Car and Politics in Britain' (1971), the motor lobby, including RAC, has been clamouring for cheaper motoring since early 1900s. The position of most motoring orgs has long been that taxation should be placed on fuel, not motor vehicles.

However, Gov'ts have long taxed "luxuries". Back then (and today) motorists said cars were not luxuries. Gov't knows luxuries when it sees them. Cash cows? Not really. Negative externalities of motoring means driving is subsidised.

Mind you, RAC is spot on about road maintenance. Forget building new ones, let's fix the existing ones first.

Would be very worrying if the government followed motorists' requests and did use money raised from fuel and excise duty to fund road repairs.