MOTORCYCLE NEWS

Wednesday 30th January 2008

The Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) has described the Public Accounts Committee's claim last week that nearly 40% of motorcyclists are evading the payment of road tax as a "gross over-estimate of the true problem using deeply flawed methodology."

Motorcycle Industry Association chief executive David Taylor, said:

Along with many others, we have questioned and challenged the DfT's methods of estimating VED evasion by motorcyclists and submitted a detailed analysis to the Committee of Public Accounts. We are deeply disappointed that it seems to have been ignored in favour of alarming, inaccurate and sensational headlines.

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The MCIA says that the way of assessing road tax evasion is wildly out of date. According to the organisation, the DfT's estimates are based on roadside surveys which make the "flawed" assumption that motorcycle traffic patterns match those of general traffic.

Taylor added:

The relative mileage methodology produces very wide ranges of statistical uncertainty. This is why we see extremely erratic estimates of motorcycle VED evasion levels which vary wildly from year to year. The rate at which motorcycle VED evasion is estimated to be rising is out of step and grossly out of scale with all other motorcycle activity indicators."

The number of evading motorcyclists observed in the latest survey was less than 1 per cent higher than the previous year, yet we are expected to believe that motorcycle VED evasion rose by 47% from an already highly unlikely figure the previous year. Common sense suggests that the estimate of nearly 40% is wildly inaccurate, or they would surely be very easy to catch."

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This comes as statistics from the Home Office show that there were nearly 1.7 million bike / vehicle crime incidents recorded over the course of 2006 and 2007.

According to the government, this represents a 4% drop on the previous year and a 61% fall since 1995.

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