Why is it ilegal not to say.....

[smiley]

I have a question and all answer and opinions welcome.

So. If someone hit your car by accident do you have to tell your ins co that you have had an accident???
Why (as i've been told ) is it illegal no to tell them when YOU DID NOT HAVE THE ACCIDENT the other driver did?

I may not have worded this the right way so forginess. But if you did nothing wrong or wern't in your car etc,, why have youhad an accident??
how can you have an accident if your not htere??
do let me know, just interested in all views..

 

[Raywood]

Some insurers use the excuse that if you have an accident that is not your fault you are more likely to have more. I have seen no evidence to support this but if you do not tell them and have a claim they may turn it down for not telling them. At renewal they send you a notice which requires you to tell them if you have had an accident within the past twelve months and if you fail to advise them you are clearly not complying with this. It is not illegel not to tell them but it could leave you in breach of the policy terms and without cover. An accident is an unlooked for or untoward event, if someone hits your car you have had an accident essentially you have both had one.
Just to illustrate the problem an electrician that I know had an accident when using one of his vans when a council dustbin lorry reversed into it. The councils insurers paid the claim and he thought no more about it. His car insurers found out about the accident and cancelled his car insurance policy which cost him as any new insurer needed to know why the policy was cancelled and loaded his premium. To be frank I would not insure my door knob with the company involved but I accept that for the majority of people they are not in my position to assess the insurer they use.

 

[smiley]

This is what I don't understand. Who is insured the car or myself??

I suppose one thing is how can my car "an inanimate object" have an accident?? As you say Raywood an unforseen event, mishap.
Can inanimate objects have accidents? I thought it was we people who did that..
So if your not in the car (this is me being a bit of a pain) and being pc correct I have not had an accident! Someone else had the accident and my car got damaged because of their accident say. I think that's it anyway.
So how would you say a car (could be anything) has had an aacident?

Am I hitting the grumpy stage, being a little pedantic? Things really annoy now with all these things

But if I personally did not have the accident why should I say that I have?

 

[Lutz]

I believe the insurers want to be informed in case the third party changes its mind about being the sole cause of the accident and decides to blame you, at least in part. In the extreme, even if you were nowhere near the car when the accident happened, there are situations where he could claim that it was parked in an unsafe way without consideration for other road users.
I was involved in an accident several years ago where someone coming the other way misjudged her speed in a bend and struck the side of my caravan. The damage was not severe and she admitted to being over the centre line, but when it came to a claim against her insurance she turned the story the other way round, i.e. that I cut the corner and wanted to claim against my insurance for the damage to her car. Fortunately, that was dismissed and I was able to do the repair to the caravan at little cost to myself. I just wonder how it would have been handled if the damage had been more severe.

 

[weejock]

Smiley I think you are trying to have your cake and eat it.

So if your house is burgled when you are not in the insurance company who covers you will not have to pay out due to the fact the burglar did not have his hand in your pocket.

 

[Mel]

Some years ago my car got written off when, on a very windy day, a large portion of next door's house fell on it. The car was unnoccupied and parked on my driveway. The insurance company sent me the usual form (for those days) for a car accident and wanted to know the speed of other vehicles, a diagram of the road, the ages of all the drivers....etc. Filling it in was interesting. Anyway they paid up.
mel

 

[Dustydog]

Here's the conundrum Smiley

Irrespective of fault, under The Road Traffic Act, in the event of an incident both parties must tell the other vehicle owner / driver the identity of their insurer.

Ray wood is correct and you should follow his advice.

 

[SteveW77]

Here's the conundrum Smiley Irrespective of fault, under The Road Traffic Act, in the event of an incident both parties must tell the other vehicle owner / driver the identity of their insurer. Ray wood is correct and you should follow his advice.

I had this happen to me years ago, It does not matter if you know the name of the insurance company and the name of the policy holder, unless the policy holder informs them that they have had an accident, they will not act. I had to take court action to get my costs repaid.There is nothing that you can do to make the third party insurance company accept the claim unless they are informed by their policy holder.

 

[Raywood]

Motor insurance is different to household. Under the RTA the motor insurer has to deal with any claim against their policyholder for an accident where the RTA applies. If there is no insurer that can be traced the Motor Insurers Bureau will deal with the claim subject to a minimum figure.
k

Here's the conundrum Smiley Irrespective of fault, under The Road Traffic Act, in the event of an incident both parties must tell the other vehicle owner / driver the identity of their insurer. Ray wood is correct and you should follow his advice.

I had this happen to me years ago, It does not matter if you know the name of the insurance company and the name of the policy holder, unless the policy holder informs them that they have had an accident, they will not act. I had to take court action to get my costs repaid.There is nothing that you can do to make the third party insurance company accept the claim unless they are informed by their policy holder.

 

[JonnyG]

Here's the conundrum Smiley Irrespective of fault, under The Road Traffic Act, in the event of an incident both parties must tell the other vehicle owner / driver the identity of their insurer. Ray wood is correct and you should follow his advice.

I had this happen to me years ago, It does not matter if you know the name of the insurance company and the name of the policy holder, unless the policy holder informs them that they have had an accident, they will not act. I had to take court action to get my costs repaid.There is nothing that you can do to make the third party insurance company accept the claim unless they are informed by their policy holder.

sorry but that is not true. my wife had a parking shut in a superstore, swapped insurance docs and thought no more of it,as frankly she thought it was knock for knock. 5 weeks later we got a letter from our insurers [the AA] stating a claim had been made against my insurances! it took me 4 months of fighting my own insurances company to stop them paying out. neither i or my wife had
informed the insurance company of the incident...

 

[SteveW77]

Here's the conundrum Smiley Irrespective of fault, under The Road Traffic Act, in the event of an incident both parties must tell the other vehicle owner / driver the identity of their insurer. Ray wood is correct and you should follow his advice.

I had this happen to me years ago, It does not matter if you know the name of the insurance company and the name of the policy holder, unless the policy holder informs them that they have had an accident, they will not act. I had to take court action to get my costs repaid.There is nothing that you can do to make the third party insurance company accept the claim unless they are informed by their policy holder.

sorry but that is not true. my wife had a parking shut in a superstore, swapped insurance docs and thought no more of it,as frankly she thought it was knock for knock. 5 weeks later we got a letter from our insurers [the AA] stating a claim had been made against my insurances! it took me 4 months of fighting my own insurances company to stop them paying out. neither i or my wife had
informed the insurance company of the incident...

I should have pointed out that it happened to me some 30 years ago, so maybe they have rectified the position since then. There was certainly no central fund to cover unisured drivers.

Steve W

 

[Dustydog]

The Motor Insurers Bureau was set up in 1946 to protect innocent injured people against an uninsured driver.
Gradually the scopwe of the MIB cover was broadened in line with the changes made to The RTA.

Thus by 1988 it became compulsory under the Act to insure against both bodily injury and third party damage.
The "ambulance chasers " have encouraged grossly inflated claims . The one Jonny sites is again an example of madness taking over from sensibility. A minor ding that you could pay for yourself for say £100.00 rapidly turns into £500 to cover a bit of whiplash, hire car for two weeks plus repairs, time off work stress trauma etc.
And you wonder why our insurance premiums rise

 

[Raywood]

The problem there is that if you do not report it the insurance company cannot easily defend a claim. You have to give them full details and they should defend it. Their problem is the cost if the other side prceed as the cost of defending the claimn can be more than buying it off. If they have doubts on liability you may find they will want to compromise it.

Here's the conundrum Smiley Irrespective of fault, under The Road Traffic Act, in the event of an incident both parties must tell the other vehicle owner / driver the identity of their insurer. Ray wood is correct and you should follow his advice.

I had this happen to me years ago, It does not matter if you know the name of the insurance company and the name of the policy holder, unless the policy holder informs them that they have had an accident, they will not act. I had to take court action to get my costs repaid.There is nothing that you can do to make the third party insurance company accept the claim unless they are informed by their policy holder.

sorry but that is not true. my wife had a parking shut in a superstore, swapped insurance docs and thought no more of it,as frankly she thought it was knock for knock. 5 weeks later we got a letter from our insurers [the AA] stating a claim had been made against my insurances! it took me 4 months of fighting my own insurances company to stop them paying out. neither i or my wife had
informed the insurance company of the incident...

 

[JonnyG]

hi raymond.
yes that is correct but by doing so you are classified as a higher risk regardless of no fault or at fault, and also yes they insurance company will look at how to save money rather than how to protect you the paying customer, which again ends with you
becoming classified as a higher risk, and therfore having to pay higher premuims,regardless.

rightly or wrongly i have always expected my insurance company to protect my interests if indeed i am not at fault, foolish notion i know.

 

[Raywood]

Hi Johnny
I do agree that some companies might use the claim as an excuse to load your premium unjustifgiably but it does depend on who the insurer is. The cheaper ones do have to recover there cut prices somehow. Essentially the companies have to take a business decision with regard to whether to buy off a claim. As an example some years ago we had a whiplash claim that looked dubious but offered £1,000 to0 get rid of it. The other side proceeded and lost the claimant being found to be a liar to put it bluntly. We recovered some costs but were still over £2,000 down plus the companies own staff time and if we had lost the bill would have been five times that. The problem is partly the system which is expensive and biased in favour of the fraudsters and the companies who will not stand together to defeat the problem.
Ray
quote=JonnyG]
hi raymond.
yes that is correct but by doing so you are classified as a higher risk regardless of no fault or at fault, and also yes they insurance company will look at how to save money rather than how to protect you the paying customer, which again ends with you
becoming classified as a higher risk, and therfore having to pay higher premuims,regardless.

rightly or wrongly i have always expected my insurance company to protect my interests if indeed i am not at fault, foolish notion i know.

[/quote]

 

[colinw1]

While stood at some traffic light someone in a van ran into the back of the 4x4 I had a few years ago. the driver gave his details/ took pics (as did I) and left. After all the tow ball had done more damage to the van.
I phoned the number he'd given me - before he went too far out of sight. everything SEEMED above board - turned out the driver was a director of the company.. I let my insurance company know. they also advised my to ring my doc as I was having a twinge in my back.

Months went by.. the company was giving my insurance co the run around - they gave wrong policy numbers, didn't own the van etc - at one point denying the accident!!.. been given the run around seems to be quite common they told me. Some companies that runs a large number of vans they split them over policies and present the cleanest at the time of their renewal (what I was told by my ins co - and may not be the practice of all van operators )

TWELVE months went by and they eventually wrote to tell me that they (insurance company) was giving up on the claim as they were not getting anywhere with the logistics company.

It seems as though - even when you play the ball and do everything right - you are likely to get ripped off by someone.
(because the incident happened over our renewal period they didnt include the NCB - so cost us more for the new policy. But we got the difference back when they gave up on the claim and re-applied the NCB)