THE pile of brown envelopes arriving on your doormat reveals you exceeded the speed limit by 10mph on the way to the shops, accidentally strayed into the bus lane and stopped on a yellow box junction. Your MoT ran out last week and you drove too close to the car in front on the motorway.

The upshot is a large payment to the government for motoring offences you may have been unaware you had committed. No camera flashed, no policeman flagged you down, but a hidden chip in your new car was picked up by radio waves seemingly monitoring your every move.

This is not some far-flung vision of the future but a plan set out in official documents that could begin to take shape within the next four years. Britain is leading the world in considering the merits of new electronic vehicle identification (EVI) technology, but the government has not yet had the stomach to go public with its aspirations.

In June Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, finally admitted he was seriously considering introducing tolls on roads after 2010 and that people could be tracked and charged by satellite. But according to those involved in the EVI project, road pricing is a small part of a far wider agenda.

EVI is set to trigger a fierce debate about how far civil liberties should be infringed in the interests of stamping out crime and increasing safety. The police argue it will allow them to track down a terrorist suspect, drug smuggler or car thief. They could type in the electronic ID number of a car, wait until it passed one of thousands of roadside sensors, then pick up the perpetrator.

The 10% of uninsured drivers who push up premiums by £30 for everyone else would quickly be identified, while dangerous cars without MoTs would be forced off the roads. About 26% of all crime is vehicle related and 30% of stolen vehicles are never recovered.

But motoring organisations believe this is a high price to pay for the thousands of drivers who could be ensnared daily for relatively minor offences. They already claim many speed cameras — a far less ruthless device than EVI — are simply a tool for raising money.

While the debate rages about the benefits and drawbacks the government is quietly laying the technological groundwork for the scheme. A report commissioned by the Department for Transport from PA Consulting identifies six types of technology — from barcodes to radio chips and even mini- satellite transmitters — that could be used for EVI.

Each would electronically communicate your registration number, car make and colour, tax status, MoT, insurance details and registered owner and address. The relative costs and merits of each system are being calculated by a second PA Consulting study.

All but the most sophisticated in-car technology would require roadside sensors, networks that have already been set up by traffic-monitoring companies and the Highways Agency on major routes.

On motorways the government would only need to use a sensor before and after each slip road to catch speeding motorists. A computer database containing details of every driver would communicate with the sensors and check that each vehicle was legal.

The Transport Research Laboratory, which is testing the technologies, is believed to think electronic chips, or tags, embedded in the chassis are the simplest and most secure.

Hills Number Plates, the country’s largest plate supplier, began selling a microchipped plate earlier this year that could be used for EVI. If bought in large numbers, the plates cost only an extra £5 each.

Fitting Britain’s 37.5m licensed vehicles with the plates could be almost covered in a year if the Treasury managed to reclaim the £185m it loses in unpaid vehicle excise duty annually.

If the government can persuade society of the benefits of EVI it could let in similar initiatives. The Home Office has already held discussions with mobile phone firms, computer companies and boat manufacturers about implanting chips.

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