The Continuous Insurance Enforcement scheme makes it an offence to keep an active, uninsured vehicle. Under the previous law, you only needed insurance if you were driving.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/travel/2011/05/now-you-must-have-car-insurance

The new law came into effect on Monday.

This means that if you let your policy lapse for even a few days while your looking for a new policy, on holiday or in the hospital you are at risk of being fined. (So SORN or keep insured)

I think this is a great idea to cut down on uninsured drivers, because the ones of us who do pay for our insurance have ended up paying increased premiums this year as i have pointed out in the other thread, but i forsee some people will get caught out by the new rule as not everyone is on the ball when renewing.

It's almost impossible to not be on the ball with the number of adverts and reminders about. Anyone that leaves it to expire then decides to quickly renew and doesn't instead spend 30 mins a couple of weeks beforehand getting the best deal is a bit of a muppet.

the amount of uninsured drivers aren't because they forgot to insure their vehicle, its because they don't want to or cant insure their vehicle.
Im all for it if it means our premiums drop because of that pool we all pay into for those uninsured accidents, but tons of people drive around
without insurance because they have not passed their test, cant afford it, or plainly know f**kall will happen to them except for a slap on the
wrists & a fine they wont be able to afford to pay anyway.

Not sure what to make of it. Sure it's good that there'll be less chance of someone somehow managing to not renew and then having an accident whilst not insured, but as said before, it won't make a difference to the majority of uninsured drivers as the cars probably not registered to them too.

If your car isn't on the road it should be declared SORN anyway though.

to play devils advocate for a second it does put those of us without a driveway or garage at something of a disadvantage. If your car is under SORN it's supposed to be physically not on the public road.

err thats always been the case with insurance tho, shouldnt be on the road at all without any

The problem i have with it is for cars/bikes that only get used for part of the year, now have to get insurance and tax then SORN and get the tax refunded when not using it, where as before you could just leave the car taxed and then get the odd weekends insurance here and there if you wanted to use it