MattW

Shamelessly copied from Aidy's post on the MLR, interesting points though.


I'm pretty sure we're all properly legal and insured on this forum (or at least think we are ), and I'm sure we all share an equal revulsion to the pillocks that drive around uninsured and the potential misery it can cause you if they hit you and it is no fault of yours.

Driving with no insurance is still quite socially unacceptable and the majority of people who are insured (95%) must surely see it as a scourge on our roads. However Direct Line are altering the way their policy works in the event that you are hit by an uninsured driver;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3540652.stm

Is this good or bad, however? At first glance, yes it is good for the person who is hit, but what about the bigger picture? Right now if I was hit by an uninsured driver I'd likely beat him to death with his own shoes. I mean I'll get no money from him so I may as well get the pleasure of removing one more idiot from the streets. But if I knew that I'd suffer no long term financial problems will I just shrug my shoulders, tut, and mutter "ah well, no harm done"?

If all insurance companies adopt this policy change then will it not see a decline in the social unacceptability of driving with no insurance? Might it make people who are currently insured stop being insured cos it is now seen as a "victimless crime"? Will people be cancelling their bloated policies in droves to take up the risk of driving with no insurance? There may be people with a moral conscious that are insured not so much for their own benefit but just in case they hit someone else, and with driving with no insurance being reduced to a "victimless crime" maybe that will just push them over the line and into the land of big, big savings?

Well what happens when we all decide to do that and no-one pays car insurance at all? Who pays for these victimless crimes then? Home owners? People with life insurance? Will pet insurance increase 10 fold? The money has to come from somewhere.

Will this move eventually negate the concept of car insurance as we have it today and force the installation of a new kind of system?

OllyK

I don't have an issue with it as such, as long as government follow it up with MUCH harsher penalties for driving without insurance. IMO the penalties should be on a par with drunk driving and those should be increased as well. The insurance companies need to follow up with civil claims against the un-insured to re-coop the costs so if you do drive uninsured and have an accident you can expect a Jail term followed by the rest of you life paying off the costs.

SJ_Skyline

I think you will find that the insurer (in this case Direct Line) will persue the uninsured driver to recoup their losses.

T.C

In most cases if the MIB are involved and make a payout as a result of another vehicle being uninsured, they will take a civil action against the uninsured driver to recover their losses.

gsm1

How successful are they at recovering money from the uninsured party? What if someone hits you and then runs off and cannot be traced, will they still honour it?

T.C

There are two agreements under the MIB uninsured and untraced. The bottom line is that regardless of whether you are hit by an uninsured vehicle or the driver/vehicle is untraced the MIB will deal with the claim as far as the claimant is concerned in exactly the same way and the end result will be the same.

However, there are very strict protocols that have to be observed which is laid out quite clearly at the time you submit the paperwork to them, and the other thing to bear in mind is that the MIB will now deal with damage only claims although there is a £250 excess, in all damage only cases in other words the claimant is responsible for the first £250 of any claim, this does not apply to injury cases.

There have been a couple of cases where the MIB have paid out on an uninsured RTA and sought to seek reimbursment from the driver, so they simply took out a bankruptcy order against them and finished them off once and for all financially.

gsm1

Ta, TC.
My Father's in a situation where he had some moped driver hit him and then fled the scene. The police meanwhile have written to him stating that it has not been possible to obtain the details of the other driver from the provided number plate. So he hasn't bothered making a claim because his insurance company told him he would lose his NCB protection.

scoob_babe

Having been hit by an uninsured driver in the scoob and being insured by Direct Line at the time too, we can vouch that DL's legal team will do as much as possible to re-coup their losses and ours.
The car that hit me had number plates belonging to a Ford Sierra (it was a Jag). The car had been scrapped at a scrap yard three weeks previously (whether this was the sierra or the jag, we still don't know), the address at which the car (again which?) had been repossessed and the neighbours had no idea or any forwarding address. In the end, the MIB agreed to repay our excess but I don't think that DL did recover anything since we still had the claim on our records although it went down as 'non fault claim'.
We have only just got rid of the claim which upped the insurance on the scoob and the DC5 for 3 years.