Darting about

It so happens that we will be using the Dartford Crossing next week, something we do several times a year. It also so happens that more or less by chance BH had heard that there were some new computerised arrangements for paying, rather than the dropping of a few coins into a handy basket, which had been the arrangements hitherto.

So off to google who directed me to some part of the government online presence where I found a great wealth of material about these new arrangements, including buttons to press if I wanted to download forms to set up an online account by post. What I could not find was a button to press to set up an online account online.

But it being early morning and there are plenty of brain cells whizzing around, I persisted. Eventually, rather to my surprise, a dialog popped up which invited me to set up the desired online account. Not very many minutes later, with only the occasional infelicity in the dialog, I seem to have a dart account and a welcome pack had arrived in my gmail box, part of which is illustrated, unread.

I think the idea is that I can now go backwards and forwards across the Dartford Crossing and the government computer will dock my dart account the requisite amount on each occasion. Should the balance on my dart account dip below the specified threshold, it will dock my bank account and effect a top-up. So we can now forget about the whole business - and try to remember not to fuss about getting the right change before setting off for a crossing.

Then, at some point in the future, we change car or change debit card with matters dart not entering consciousness, charge across the crossing to find that we have incurred some horrendous penalty charge, rather in the way that banks stuff you for trifling credit offences. Or, maybe, the government computer is clever & intrusive enough to keep checking you car details and your bank details and to send a reminder to your nominated email account when it detects a problem. Provided of course that you have not stopped using that account - which it might also be able to detect, but how would it know where your new one was?

In the meantime, we shall see if we can get on without any such charges - wondering once again how people who are too old or too tired to bother with all this online stuff get on. Perhaps the idea is that one is supposed to stop driving when one gets to that point - which is maybe not so unreasonable.

PS 1: I worry sometimes how on earth I would manage if google went bust or I needed to move off gmail for some other reason. It is, in effect, my personal identification number for so many purposes.

PS 2: I wonder also whether the new arrangements for top-up would cope if I drove backwards and forwards across the crossing at high speed, high speed enough that the computer and the bank could not jointly keep up. In which eventuality, I suppose they might reasonably say that you were being a touch reckless and that anything that went wrong was down to you.