New-type Car Tax In U.K.

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31407, 28 June 1967, Page 17

New-type Car Tax In U.K.

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, June 27. The British Ministry of Transport yesterday revealed a secret black box which has been designed as an electronic tax collector against city motorists. The box, smaller than a house brick, and costing about £5 will be fitted to each car permitted into congested city areas.

Each time the car and the box cross a special cable buried in the road the meter on the box will register the crossing and the motorist will have to feed it a coin or plastic token.

The tokens will be on sale at post offices and will cost between Is and Is 6d each.

About 100,000 activating cables will be planted in the roads at the entrance to cities, particularly in the congested areas.

The meters will be fitted with a device to protect them against tampering and, as another check, each car will have a light on top which flashes as it crosses the cable. In that way parking police will be able to check that the cars are fitted with the regulation working devices and that they are in good order. If the light does not flash the car number will be reported to the police and the driver can be fined heavily. As an alternative to pay-as-

you-drive meters and plastic coins, the boxes can be fitted with punch cards which record each cable-crossing so that the motorist will pay a lump sum each year along with road tax and driving licence fees.

The black box was on show at the Government’s road research laboratory in Crow-

thorne, Berkshire, and scientists predicted that they would be law in Britain within a year or two. All roads where traffic

moves at an average 15 m.p.h. or less are expected to be designated as congested roads and be fitted with the activating cables. The “Daily Sketch” in an editorial said the black box was the latest step in the Government’s campaign to price private motorists off the road. "Trying to tax the motorists off the road is the policy of despair,” the editorial said. Only about a quarter of the £l2OO million squeezed out of motorists each year was spent on the roads, the “Daily Sketch” said. Britain’s Minister of Transport, Mrs Barbara Castle—a pedestrian—and other Government leaders “still seem to believe the Socialist myth that cars are only for the rich.” “Today cars are within the reach of millions of ordinary people. “If the money you pay was spent on the roads, crackpot inventions like car meters wouldn’t be needed,” the newspaper said.