SIR - Regarding your front page story (T&A, January 28), I spent 42 years in the insurance industry, at a time when it was a respectable occupation, so I am only too well aware of the problems caused by uninsured motorists.

Road Traffic Acts requiring motorists to insure their vehicles began in the early 1930s. The only compulsory cover was personal injury to third parties, and that has not changed.

The Motor Insurers Bureau came into existence in the 1950s when it was realised some motorists were flouting the law and not insuring.

The MIB consists of all the UK motor insurers and is not, as some people think, a government quango. It is we, the motorists who do insure, who fund the claims which MIB pay out, which run into hundreds of millions of pounds each year.

The MIB deals exclusively with legal liabilities for third party injury claims. This means that if your car was damaged by an uninsured motorist, there would be no MIB insurance cover for the damage to your car, or any other of your property so damaged.

What I cannot understand is that, if we know so much about these uninsured motorists, why are they not "brought to book", by the police?

D L R Hirst, Willow Avenue, Idle Moor, Bradford