Pay-as-you-drive road tax: Best of Reader Comments

The silicon.com virtual mailbag has been overflowing with irate reader comments this week in response to Transport Secretary Alistair Darling's announcement that the government plans to introduce a pay-as-you-drive system of road tax using satellite tracking technology.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the government's plans have not been met with much approval from silicon.com readers for a variety of reasons ranging from it being another tax on motorists and Big Brother car tracking, to a fear it will lead to "myopic pensioners" hogging the roads.

Bob Brennan, an IT consultant from Cambridge, said: "We're already paying per mile for using the roads - it's called 'petrol tax'. It's low tech, it works, it's way more than people can afford, and it does bugger all to relieve congestion."

The knackered state of much of the UK's public transport system was also a thorny issue in Darling's plan to force more motorists off the road and onto trains and buses.

John Beardon, and IT company director in Somerset, said: "People drive out of necessity. Instead of involving themselves in what would probably become the biggest tech farce on the planet, [the government should] throw the money at a public transport service that is cheap and available to everyone - not the antiquated, inefficient, joke of a system that we put up with at the moment."

The government's faith in the technology also came in for a flaming, with many readers suggesting that people will soon find a way to get round the system.

Roger Huffadine, a CTO in Worcester, said: "It is well known that low level local interference disrupts the positioning algorithms of GPS. There will also be a very interesting market for 'spoof' boxes, which send radio frequency signals pretending to be satellites, telling the onboard system that you are travelling down a dirt track road in Wales charged at 1p per mile when you are actually on a high cost route in a city centre charged at £1 per mile."

Some people - who are probably at this very minute making tinfoil hats to stop the government monitoring their thoughts - saw something more sinister in the plans.

One reader said: "Hmmm RFID tags so that in 2010 stores will be able to tell that I have just walked into their branch in City B wearing underwear that I bought on their store card five years ago from their branch in City A; vehicle tracking so that the government can tell not only how I drove from A to B but also which roads I used and what speed I travelled at... and people are worrying about being asked to carry an ID card."

A web application developer from Yorkshire predicted that speeding fines and penalty points under the tracking scheme will clear the roads of "all but the most myopic of pensioners".

But the last word has to go to a reader called Richard, whose despair probably summed up what many readers felt.

"Oh god, it is all going to go horribly wrong. I just know it," he said.