European vehicle card
In the context of globalization, the development of tourism and commercial transactions without borders, more and more vehicles transit the countries of the European Union. Theoretically, the control bodies know the documents of vehicles registered in other states, but in practice things are different, sometimes with serious consequences for traffic safety.
In order to easily identify information such as the owner, technical inspection, mandatory vehicle insurance, I think it is imperative that vehicles registered in the European Union states can be identified through a unified system, available in all the languages of the European Union, and access to this common database to be gradually made by the organizations, institutions and persons who access or process them.
In this way, the vehicle registration certificate and/or vehicle identity card could be replaced by the European vehicle card, where a QR code would also could be available for easy access to relevant vehicle information.
In addition to the vehicle’s technical data, owner and address, this database could contain valuable information for traffic safety watchers such as:
- Technical inspection: when and where it was done, the mileage, as well as the expiration date;
- Compulsory insurance: by whom it was made and when it expires;
- The accidents in which the vehicle was involved and the damages suffered;
- Identification data of the owner such as phone number and/or email address.
While I was writing this material, a piece of news caught my attention, namely that of the European digital driving license. Well, the norm should be extended to both the registration certificate and the Vehicle Identity Card, which would be equally useful for the owners or users of vehicles, not to mention a virtual identity card of citizens Europeans, it would be just as useful, but the latter is not the subject of road safety.
Registering a used vehicle in another state can be a frustrating experience.
While any state recognizes the right of vehicles from another state to drive on its internal territory, it recognizes roadworthiness testing carried out in the third state where that vehicle is registered, its registration can be a major problem.
For example, a car registered in Germany, with the technical inspection done only a month ago, which has as additional equipment a towing hook and an LPG installation, cannot be registered in Spain, because it does not pass the technical inspection. To be able to overcome this obstacle, the vehicle owner will have to dismantle the towing hook and disable the corresponding electrical installation, even if he has European homologation certificates for these components. For the LPG installation, the vehicle owner can obtain against payment, from an authorized workshop in Spain, documents showing that the installation was installed there. In other words, a vehicle registered in Germany (or anywhere in the EU), can drive in Spain only with German plates (or with the plates of the state in which it is registered), but cannot receive Spanish registration plates. I’m not talking about the bureaucratic procedures, which are sometimes hallucinatory. Before the technical inspection, it is necessary for an engineer to inventory the vehicle, to find out how many wheels, doors, seats, windows, or what dimensions it has, so that then, the engineers at the technical inspection station completely ignore that report, because they have access to all vehicle data online.
A European vehicle card could remove any burdensome or unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles or procedures, and registering a vehicle from one state to another could be done in a similar way to registering a used vehicle after a change of ownership in same country.