Vehicle History Check expert, Cartell.ie, notes the Irish Independent published an interesting proposal to curb the practice of vehicle clocking. It calls for the mandatory declaration of mileage at motor taxation renewal time every year. The proposal, published by Eddie Cunningham in the motoring section of yesterday’s paper, reads as follows:

“There is a simple solution to limit the extent of this problem, motor tax renewal forms should be amended to include a column for recording mileage, with penalties for offenders.

I have to conclude from the longevity of this issue that due to vested interests in some parts of the trade and some car owners’ malintent, that the correction of this problem will continue to be long-fingered, and the genuine consumer will continue to be burned and the image of the motor industry sullied.

January 1, Mr Cunningham buys new car. When taxing car for first time you are required to record mileage. Obviously this will only be a few test kilometres which you have driven.

On every occasion you tax that car afterwards you will be required to record the mileage just as you are asked for your insurance details.

Five years later, Mr X spots your car for sale. He likes the car but is a bit concerned about mileage so he goes online and (for a small fee) looks up the recorded mileage since first registration.

In the interest of data protection, that is all the info he can get online — simply the recorded mileage for the previous five years. This should be a relatively easy change to make to the taxing procedure as it is simply a software change in the system.

If this system was developed in England as well it would ease the worries of those importing cars.”

Certainly at Cartell.ie, we’ve done our bit to raise awareness of this issue – even going so far as to draft legislation to criminalise the practice, and we’ve published blow by blow accounts of the extent of the problem in Ireland. Obviously we all want to see a solution to this problem, and the proposal above does merit some consideration. What is required, more than anything, is will-power on the part of the Government to tackle the problem. Probably the issue needs a political champion on the Government side.