Reply to post: Re: 40,000 drivers out of work

Shock: Brit capital strips Uber of its taxi licence

Ogi

Re: 40,000 drivers out of work

> London police cannot even be arsed to check that foreign cars have proper insurance, stay within the 6 months allowed by EU regs and have a valid foreign MOT. They are the only ones in Europe that are so lax. Emission control enforcement. You GOTTA BE KIDDING.

Your comment was an insightful read for me, but I think you are being a bit unfair on the London police.

Having extensively traveled across Europe by car multiple times, including the Serbia/Montenegro/FYROM/Greek borders, I can say that by and large the plod across the channel don't care that much about emissions either.

Serbia/Montenegro has very big problems with smuggling. Because they are non EU, some things are so cheap there (Especially ciggies) everyone and their mother tries to smuggle some into the EU for a handsome profit. Due to tariffs on certain goods, just as many try to smuggle laptops etc... the other way as well (they once booked me because I had two laptops for use. Had to explain one was business, and one personal, and they actually wrote it into my passport, so when I leave the country the make and models can be checked, to make sure I didn't flog them).

As a result their borders are one of the most locked down in Europe, and they will be thorough with checks. So while they do pay much attention and take their time, the side effect is that you can have 8 hour queues to cross the border, while they check and cross check every single detail of everyone.

If that happened across the whole of the EU, commerce and transport would grind to a halt.

I have also never seen an emissions check in the EU, and most Europeans who live there have also removed their particulate filters (or other emissions equipment) on their cars, and neither the plod nor their equivalent of MOT garages give a toss. Never thought I'd see people "rolling coal" on public roads in Europe, but I have, on a few occasions.

As for checking the 6 month limit. I know UK expats who never bothered registering their cars where they moved to in the EU. Some have driven for 5+ years over the 6 month limit, without ever getting bothered by the police. Indeed as I am thinking of moving to the EU, most of my friends there already said not to worry about the 6 month limit, because "nobody really cares that much".

Saying that, things might be different in Austria and Germany, two countries I have yet to extensively road trip on, so things could be radically different there, but the rest of the EU is not much different to the UK in that sense.

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