Letters to Fleet News' editor Martyn Moore.

What to do about road tax dodgers?

Regarding Peter Withers’ letter on potholes and the need for a fairer tax system (August 21), I have to say ‘yes, Mr Withers, you have missed something’. 

Scrapping road tax and adding ‘a few pence’ on to petrol or diesel will still not enable him to properly claim compensation for any damage from potholes (try your insurer’s legal cover).

This government should be spending all of the £44bn collected on the road system and not frittering £37bn away elsewhere, which would still happen anyway even if the thousands of untaxed vehicles ‘coughed up’.

Fuel prices are already far too high for most people as it is, without punishing law abiding people and businesses with further increases just to make a minority fall into line. 

Or would Mr Withers like to see inflation carry on increasing further, based on his ‘blindingly simple’ master plan?

Harsher penalties of vehicle seizure, licence points and fines of 10 times the unpaid amounts when caught are what is required to act as a deterrent to all tax and insurance dodgers.

Paul Hutchinson, Transport supervisor, Toolbank
Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire

Cutting congestion is child’s play

I am currently enjoying my runs to and from work, and am even saving money on fuel. Why is this? Because I am not stuck in the school run traffic. 

For six weeks per year plus odd weeks for half term, the roads are not blighted with 4x4 fuel-guzzling vehicles taking to school kids who live only about a mile away. 

No wonder child obesity cases are at their highest – perhaps lack of exercise is a major contributory factor. 

Surely it is time for the government or local communities to assess the number of children being ferried to school by their parents and find out how many routes to school could include short journeys through housing estates to pick up kids who are slightly off the main bus route.

Not only do normal workers such as me have to sit behind these vehicles for twice as long of a morning, but buses are permitted to barge in whenever they please, leaving working folk who keep the economy going stuck in their car inhaling exhaust fumes that are contributing to our environmental problems. 

Come on, parents who live close to schools, make your kids walk – it’s good for them.

Beverley Hogg
Styropack, Blackburn