Using a mobile whilst driving - £2,000 fine plus a six month ban
Driving without insurance - 3 year prison sentence

I don't have a problem with the general idea of fixed penalties but I think that, for example, using a mobile whilst driving should carry a points penalty not just a fine because hogging the middle lane, whilst it causes problems, isn't as dangerous as using a mobile at, say, 70mph.
Also, I'd prefer that there would be degrees of offence so that not just the basic offence but also the level of danger it represents would be taken into account.

Prison capacity - c 88,000

In just Yorkshire and the Humber, an estimated 3.97% out of 2.7 million vehicles are not insured. That's over 100,000.

According to recent statistics (2012), the number of cars in the United Kingdom is about 40 million. If the overall uninsured rate is only half the above, that would be 800,000 prisoners. Over twice the population of Monaco.

Where are you going to put them all?

Average cost of keeping someone in jail per annum is £47,000. That's an annual bill of £37,600,000,000. How are you going to pay for it?

So the careless drivers of the UK are paying for the bankers' folly now too?

Not that I have an issue with trying to stamp out bad driving.

Apologies for the thread drift

Using the stats you have provided the current deterrent doesn't seem to be working too well. I myself don't have the answer but a couple of hundred quid as a fine is nothing and doesn't solve the issue.

The fine needs to be a lot greater than a year's insurance would have cost, otherwise the sheer economics will tempt many into taking the chance.

I think it does currently.

You get caught without insurance and you receive 6pts on your licence, £200 fine, you car also gets seized at a cost over just over £100 AND you pay about £20 per day storage costs at the lock up before you get your car back.

Oh and should you have no licence or only a provisional you get a further £60

Can't afford to do that too often otherwise you get banned and DQ. Drive when DQ and you get arrested.

How does that not work?

But I only commented on your ridiculous suggestion of a 3 years chokey for every uninsured person. At least the present system, in the individual case, works very well, you get points, a fine and lose your car (unless you insure it and pay the costs).

The problem would seem to me to be an inability or unwillingness to catch any more than a small proportion of offenders. Not what they do when they get one.

Unless an uninsured driver can categorically prove that he was uninsured through no fault of his own, the car should be seized and crushed or sold. A sizeable number of uninsured drivers are not driving bangers, there are plenty of them behind the wheels of what are prestige cars

My current job provides a car and when I first started I was driving up Holderness Rd in a new car with 300 or so miles on the clock when an uninsured driver smashed my back end. I asked to swap details and he just said as bold as brass 'not insured mate, sorry', fortunately it was at around 8am so there were lots of witnesses. Don't know what happened to him as the coppers never got in touch and my company just had the car fixed.

My niece who is 20 has just had her renewal through recently and it's £2,600 for a 1.0l Corsa (which has gone up a fair whack). No wonder there are so many willing to take risks.

lad at my college drove a BMW 3 series(it was a good few years old, but still) with no insurance, his parents didn't know he had it as he parked it in the next street to his house. They thought he went out for the bus every morning when he walked round to it, I have no idea how much money they gave him but to not notice that it must be a lot.

In the year I was there at the same time as him, he never got caught by either the police or his parents.