Technology including anpr systems is helping police to catch out insurance dodgers.
A police crackdown is under way on those motorists who are either tardy on renewing their car insurance policies - or intentionally avoid taking out the cover.
Police announced that their operations had resulted in a total of 170,000 uninsured vehicles being stopped last year. In 2006, this total stood at just 78,000.
This increase has been boosted by a nationwide roll-out of various new technologies aimed at helping the police catch uninsured drivers. For example, police cars have been fitted with automatic number plate recognition (anpr) systems, which scan other vehicles and check their details against a central database.
Commenting on the figures, Simon Douglas, director of AA Insurance, said: "Police are very likely to stop the motorist [if alerted by anpr] and if they can't provide satisfactory evidence that the car is insured, it can be confiscated."
He added: "If you're late renewing, or take out a new policy after your existing one has lapsed or if you buy a new car, it can take three or four days before details of the new policy are updated. The anpr equipment will therefore register the car as being uninsured."
Figures cited by the AA show that uninsured motorists cost the industry around £500 million a year. This adds around £30 to every UK car insurance premium.
Around two million of Britain's 30 million drivers are thought to be without appropriate car insurance.
