RAC's Bristol data centre breaks down Motor insurance biz RAC suffered a day-long outage after something went kaput in its data centre in Bristol. The server farm is still titsup, an RAC spokesperson told The Reg, and the cause of the cock-up is unknown. The RAC website is working but services involving sales and member accounts have been affected by the downtime …
Considering policemen are now having license-plate scanners and seize cars where they don't have any records of their insurance fee being paid, a short glitch in the system, might cause those records to not be updated in time, leaving a lot of people stranded.
Interesting prospect.
Plod uses MID (Motor Insurers Database), which can take up to 7 days (14 for comercial and fleet policies) to be updated from individual insurers, as Plod requires "reasonable grounds" for ticketing/further actions/seizure he/she can't rely solely on MID & so they are supposed to check directly with the insurer before proceeding. If Plod is unable to cofirm with the insurer for technical reasons, the most they can do is issue a "Producer" notice requring you to prove your insurance within 7 days, that is unless of course there are other contributory factors - i.e. you are carrying 8 passengers in a Mini whilst being 5 times over the blood alcohol limit and doing 85 mph in a 30 zone!
I'm not sure what Mini would do 85mph with eight passengers in it. No "real" Mini could manage it,* and I doubt the new fake Mini could, either (but then, I haven't driven one).
*Many years ago, I was one of eight people in a Mini 1000 going between pub and friend's house. It could barely manage 30mph, and we had to avoid anything but the slightest upward incline! Six people in a (real) Fiat 500 offered an equally speedless journey ...
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