Capital punishment for diesel drivers?

Air pollution is a enormous problem for the UK.

So huge a problem has it grow to be that earlier this year the European Commission launched legal proceedings against the government for missing its air pollution targets.

In a bid to tackle the issue, Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is organizing to make central London an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ). That would imply that diesel drivers who venture into the capital could discover themselves obtaining to stump up an extra charge on top of the congestion charge.

2020 vision

Despite the fact that there are calls for the alterations to come into force sooner, the plan is to implement the ULEZ by 2020. And where London leads, other main towns and cities across the UK could properly follow.

This would create districts in which all but the cleanest of engines would be penalised. Diesel cars that didn’t meet the required Euro 6 normal – which comes into impact from January 2015 – would have to pay the charge.

Undesirable news if you drive a diesel, and a true kick in the particulates if you in fact purchased a diesel on the back of it getting portrayed as the more eco-friendly option.

Though diesels do make fewer CO2 emissions than petrol engines, the higher levels of particulates they spew out, specifically nitrogen oxide, make them a greater wellness threat.

This was anything the Labour government failed to acknowledge when it overhauled automobile excise duty (VED) to offer less expensive road tax on diesels, which means people have been horribly misinformed and purchased into the myth of the eco-friendly diesel engine.

Has Boris got your back?

It will be of little solace to diesel owners that Boris Johnson is sympathetic to their plight. The Mayor of London mentioned: “I really feel sorry for them [diesel drivers]. It is a huge failure of government policy. Millions of people were told that they have been carrying out a decent point by acquiring a diesel car.

“You have got to be reasonable and fair to folks who are buying cars now. And they will be very aggrieved if they are told they are going to face an added charge to go via the centre of London. And you also need to take account of exactly where the industry is.”

Discomfort in the gas

Unsurprisingly, the announcement that diesel drivers will sooner or later have to pay to drive in certain locations has not gone down well with motorists.

A survey of a lot more than 2,000 folks carried out by vehicle supermarket, Motorpoint, found 3-quarters (75%) of motorists wouldn’t be prepared to pay a lot more in taxes to assist neighborhood authorities meet European clean air targets.

Kevin Pratt, insurance expert at MoneySuperMarket said: “Motoring fees are high adequate as it is, so drivers won’t welcome any additional costs, especially if they have purchased a diesel automobile in the previous due to its supposed eco-friendliness.

“There are lots of methods to reduce the expense of motoring although, not least shopping about for your car insurance coverage and adjusting your driving style to save on fuel, and the changes in legislation will not take effect for a quantity of years however so there is lots of time to consider changing your automobile.”

What do you make of the London ULEZ proposals? A excellent notion for cleaner air or just an additional stealth tax? Let us know…

Capital punishment for diesel drivers?