Does the dvla know if a car is uninsured?
Yes they do know and there is a growing network of cameras around that automatically check this however there is one point that you are completely missing – It is possible that a vehicle being driven on the road could have no insurance specifically mentioning it on the policy. There are many traders and fleet policies that work perfectly legally in this way. There is no practical way to use anything other than actually stopping the vehicle to find out the insurance situation. ANPR cameras are good to flag up possible insurance problems, and work great for no tax or MOT but, it is not possible to check them for insurance without stopping them.
