Most common driving scams and how to avoid them
It’s all too easy for drivers to fall victim to one of the many scams on the roads. We share some of the most common cons and how you can spot them...
According to official figures from UK Finance, Britain was scammed out of nearly £630 million during the first half of 2025 alone. Of course, scams are present in all areas of life, although a considerable number of criminals target drivers, both on the road and online.
Whether you're new to driving or have spent decades behind the wheel, it’s all too easy to be conned out of money when taxing or insuring your car, or simply using a public car park or EV charger.
If you’re looking to stay safe when buying or selling a car, you can check our guide to used car scams. Here, however, we share some of the most common driving scams, how you can avoid them, and what to do if you think you’ve been fooled.
Car tax scam emails
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has been battling scam messages pretending to be from the department for years. This type of scam remains persistent due to its simplicity. Fraudsters often send texts and emails in the style of genuine DVLA letters. These messages typically try to convince unsuspecting drivers that their car tax payment has failed or that they are due a refund.
The driver will be prompted to click onto a link and enter their bank details, with the messaging urging them to make a payment as soon as possible to avoid being fined for driving an untaxed car. However, while the website itself will look legitimate, the money sent and the driver’s payment details will be received by the criminal.
How not to be scammed
The DVLA states that it will never send emails or texts that ask you to confirm your personal details or payment information. If you receive a message purporting to be from the DVLA, ignore it and don’t click on any links it may have.
Fake emails that pretend to be from any Government department can be reported to the National Cyber Security Centre on report@phishing.gov.uk. The fake websites they link to can then be investigated and removed to help prevent anyone from falling victim to them.
Car tax subscription scam websites
Con artists often set up websites with names that are very similar to the official Government ones for car tax and other services. These websites may appear alongside genuine ones in online searches, so they’re easy to mistake. If you do click onto these sites, you might be asked to pay for services that, on the official website, are completely free of charge.
Some of these websites ask for your vehicle’s details and then, instead of letting you buy your car tax, sign you up to a monthly subscription for car information, costing as much as £10 per month.
How not to be scammed
If you want to do anything via the DVLA online, make sure you only use the official gov.uk website. The website for car tax is https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax. If you’re unsure whether a website is legitimate, check that the address ends in gov.uk.
Clean Air Zone scam
Several UK cities, such as Birmingham and Bristol, operate clean air zones (CAZs) – known in London as the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) – which charge drivers who enter the area in an older, more polluting vehicle. After entering a CAZ, drivers typically have several days to pay before they receive a fine. However, scammers have been known to create fake websites that claim to be authorised to collect payments.
These will typically look like and feature a very similar address as the legitimate Government website. In some cases, these websites will allow users to enter their vehicle’s registration number and tell drivers of compliant vehicles that they are still required to pay in order to enter the zone.
However, if an unsuspecting driver uses one of these websites to pay for entering a CAZ, their payment details will go to the scammer, who could extract as much as thousands of pounds from their account.
What’s more, since the local council didn’t receive the payment for the CAZ charge, drivers of non-compliant vehicles who fall victim to this scam could also be issued a fine for not paying.
How not to be scammed
Always make sure you use the genuine Government website when paying for entering a CAZ. The website for CAZ or ULEZ payments is https://www.gov.uk/clean-air-zones. Alternatively, you can call Clean Air Zone Support on 0300 029 8888.
If you think a website is fraudulent, report it to the National Cyber Security Centre on their website or by calling 7726.
Car park and car charging site QR code scam
QR codes are used to enable people to pay for parking and EV charging in many locations around the country. Criminals create their own QR codes and stick these over legitimate ones. Unsuspecting drivers who scan the fake code with their mobile phone are directed to a fake version of the parking company’s website, where they’re prompted to enter their card details to pay for parking. These details are then used to take hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds from the bank account.
Since the actual parking company won’t receive the driver’s payment, it’s likely that they will also receive a penalty charge notice (PCN), which might cost as much as £160.
One lady lost thousands to QR code scammers operating at a car park in Teeside. Although her bank initially blocked the payment to the scammers, they phoned her, posing as bank staff and took £13,000 from her account.
How not to be scammed
To protect customers from this type of fraud, a growing number of car park operators are replacing QR codes from their machines with methods that are harder for scammers to replicate. If you do find a site with QR codes, and it looks like it may have been tampered with, see if there is another way to pay.
If you do decide to use a QR code to pay for parking or EV charging, check for any signs that it might be fake before you scan it. These include:
- Corners or edges that are starting to peel off
- The QR code is misaligned
- The design of the QR code not matching the business’s branding
- The QR code is located somewhere other than on the actual payment machine
After scanning a QR code, make sure it takes you to a legitimate website. Check the website address (often called a URL) and ensure it matches the name of the car park operator. Also check that the website’s URL starts with https:// because the ‘s’ in that part of the address means it’s a secure site.
If the car park or EV charging network has a specific payment app, download this from your phone’s app store and pay via this instead.
Fake parking fines
Some scammers have been known to send drivers texts and emails stating that they have been issued a penalty charge notice (PCN) for failing to pay when using a car park. These messages typically claim that drivers will be taken to court or even banned from driving if they fail to pay the fine, and feature a link to pay or appeal.
If an unsuspecting driver clicks on the link, any information they share will be sent straight to the scammers. Of course, this includes their payment details if they decide to pay the fine, but may also be the driver’s full name and contact details, which could make them a bigger target for scammers in the future. This is known as a phishing scam.
How not to be scammed
PCNs are only sent through the post, so if you ever receive a text or email claiming that you’ve received one for a parking offence, ignore it and never click on the link it contains. You can report scam texts to the National Cyber Security Centre via their website or by calling 7726.
Crash for cash
This type of scam has been prevalent for some years and could have a prolonged impact on victims. The fraudster creates a scenario that will cause an accident, such as slamming on their vehicle’s brakes unexpectedly to make the driver behind crash into them, or by flashing their headlights to let a vehicle pass them and then drive into them.
In some cases, the scammers will use two vehicles to surround an unsuspecting driver. The car in front will drive erratically to cause the victim to crash. The driver in the rear car will act as an eye witness, blaming the victim for causing the incident. Another crash for cash tactic is for two criminals to stage a crash for their own cars, enabling them to make fraudulent insurance claims for each vehicle.
There’s also a variant of this scam known as clip for cash, in which the criminal will create a fake smashing sound and then claim that your car has damaged theirs, for example by knocking off a door mirror. They will then demand money and intimidate the victim if they refuse to pay.
As well as the trauma of being involved in one of these incidents, the victims are likely to have increased insurance premiums as a result of the claim against them.
How not to be scammed
Always keep a good distance between your car and the one in front, and if the driver ahead starts behaving erratically, increase this distance or consider taking a different route to get away from them. Be wary at junctions and when someone flashes their lights to let your car go, too.
If you think you’ve been the victim of a crash for cash scam, don’t confront the criminals there and then. Act as you would in a real accident, gathering the other party’s details, taking photos and getting statements from any witnesses. Then report the incident to the police and your insurer, stating that you think it was a staged accident.
You can also call the Insurance Fraud Bureau’s Cheatline on 0800 422 0421.
Ghost brokers
One of the fastest growing insurance fraud, ghost broking is when an unsuspecting driver takes out a car insurance policy with a bogus company. Scammers search for victims via social media or word of mouth, offering fake car insurance deals that are typically far cheaper than legitimate policies.
If a driver agrees to a policy, the scammer will likely send fake documents, which are often forged replicas of genuine documents. In other cases, the criminals will take out a real policy but falsify important details, such as the driver’s age, address and history, to bring down the premium.
In either case, drivers may not be aware of the scam until they are involved in an accident and can’t make a claim or are stopped by the police for driving without insurance, which could result in a fixed penalty notice of £300 or their car being seized.
While drivers of all ages can fall victim to ghost brokers, scammers generally target younger drivers as they typically pay higher prices for their car insurance.
How not to be scammed
Only buy car insurance via bonafide companies, not via social media sites. Use online comparison websites to see which providers are offering the cheapest cover, and try some of our money saving car insurance tips, such as buying cover up to three weeks before you need it, in order to make big savings.
Driving test booking scams
With the National Audit Office stating that learner drivers were forced to wait an average of 22 weeks for a practical driving test in September 2025, a growing number of scammers have started to profit from the demand. The scammers use bots that automatically buy up driving test slots whenever they become available on the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) website.
The scammers will then take to social media to sell the slots at greatly inflated prices. While a practical driving test slot should cost no more than £75, some scammers have been seen advertising them for as much as £500.
Some scammers will also offer paid services that promise to notify learners of any cancellations at the driving test centre they are interested in taking their test at. Users of some of these sites have reported that, once they paid for the service, they received no notifications of cancellations.
How not to be scammed
Never book a driving test via social media. Instead, you should book the test slot yourself using the official DVLA test website or by calling 0300 200 1122. The DVSA also urges against using cancellation services to bring forward your test slot, noting that from the end of March 2026 learners will only be able to make two changes to their booking.
What’s more, no matter who is selling them, never buy a fake official document, such as a driving licence.
What to do if you’ve been scammed:
If you think you’ve been scammed online, it’s important to contact Report Fraud via their website or on 0300 123 2040 as soon as possible. Remember to include details such as the phone number or email address that contacted you, the website you visited, and any financial or otherwise personal information you shared. If you sent money to the scammer less than 24 hours ago, you should also report the incident to the police on 101.
It’s also important to contact your bank or payment service after discovering that you’ve been scammed. The payment service might be able to refund your money. If you used a debit card (or a credit card for payments of less than £100), the company can use chargeback in an attempt to reverse the payment. Nevertheless, the process is often time consuming and there’s no guarantee the bank will be able to give you a refund.
