Free Car Checks
Submitted by: Gareth Oakley
Website: http://www.freecarcheck.org/
Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?
This service would query the various vehicle databases kept by goverment departments and assemble a report with a relatively full history of a vehicle. Other companies charge for this service and add value - but basics of "Is a car reported stolen" really ought to be made available to the public to help cut vehicle crime.
The service could also allow users to report a vehicle stolen themselves - quicker to show than data from the police which may be out of date (see below)
What information or services do you need?
The DVLA and VOSA make a lot of information available about car registrations via their websites, but there is no free way of checking if a vehicle is stolen on the web. The US is about to make this data available freely - why can't we? As a worst case resort some agreement could be made with the police to receive a regularly updated list of cars reported stolen - other commercial organisations can already get this.
Posted by Dave So on 10 March 2009 at 03:06 PM
I like this idea. You can get car history checks with the AA but they are quite expensive.
With this kind of service it would be important to try prevent fraudsters using the information for the wrong reasons. For example car VIN numbers should never be exposed to the public, but if are about to buy a car you should be able to validate the VIN number if you already have it.