Drivers back road-charging black box plans

Almost half the UK public support a road-user charging scheme and nearly three-quarters would be happy having a 'black box' in their car to track their road usage, according to a new survey.

The findings contrast sharply with the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the government's car-tracking road charging plans last week by silicon.com readers but the MORI survey was undertaken before Transport Secretary Alistair Darling's announcement.

The MORI survey of 1,000 UK adults found 47 per cent support the idea of charging for road use to help reduce congestion at peak times providing some of the revenues raised are put back into lower road taxes.

A third said charging should be based on the size of the vehicle's engine, while 29 per cent favoured using the level of emissions and 26 per cent opted for mileage driven as the ideal metric to use.

But support for blanket and not just peak-time road user charging dropped dramatically to 24 per cent, with 64 per cent opting for improved public transport as the best option.

Almost three-quarters of respondents also said they are happy for plans to fit every vehicle in the UK with a black box that can be tracked by satellite.

Those in favour said the black boxes would help the emergency services to locate vehicles in an accident and a quarter backed ideas such as insurers discounting premiums based on data collected by the boxes.

Grant Klein, head of transport at IT consultancy Detica, which commissioned the research, said in a statement: "These findings suggest there is significant support for the idea of road user charging as long as it is targeted at the real problem times and as long as the overall tax burden remains constant."