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Insurance for ride-on mower??


sid
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I've just received my monthly Britline statement and enclosed was a Spring newsletter. One of the items in it mentions that the French code of insurance requires a ride-on mower to be specifically insured for public liability even if it never goes out onto the road.

I can't decide if the "code of insurance" is the same thing as a legal requirement. I've been using my mower for 7 years and never heard of this before. Needless to say I haven't specifically insured it! Oh dear!

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Sid,

Get its own insurance anyway. We got done  this way a few years back, although our mower doesn't go on the road we thought it came under the contents insurance, well it went walkies by persons unknown one night when we were in the UK. Insurance company wouldn't play ball at all, so it was a big loss for us.

We replaced the sit on and now have it insured on its own for theft etc (like a car) not too expensive 61 euros last year,  and we also get a nice little green insurance sticker we attach to the mower. Insurance company is Pacifica on both instances.

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We bought our first ride on mower and the Shop told me to get the insurance as it is not covered by the House Insurance.

Pacifica via Credit Agricole offered 3 levels of Insurance

1st - Public Liability only - ie if you have a friend park their car and you drive into it or scratch it, it will be covered or of course do not see someone come upbehind you and knock them over.

2nd - as above plus a few extras and repacement if it is stolen

3rd - all above and if I drive it into a tree and is written off, they will repair\repalce.

I went for option 3 and costs me 8E each month. Well worth it when my mower cost 3,000E
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My flabber has never been more gasted! [blink]

I'll get a quote.. next week... or the week after. The mower came with the house and is well over 7 years old so it's the liability risks I'm thinking of. I must admit that I thought it was the sort of thing covered by my house insurance.

I wonder how many more of these potholes are still waiting for me to fall into? [:)]

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It reinforces my choice of having the absolute minimum of dealings with insurers and hence very few insurances.

You can have insurances coming out of your ears and a (French) insurer will still devote all of their resources to welshing on their responsibilities.

There is no law saying that you should insure your ride on mower, the cops would soon be on your case should  you take to the road on it, just insurers refusing a legitamate claim on one hand whilst creating business for themselves on the other.

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[quote user="sid"]

I wonder how many more of these potholes are still waiting for me to fall into? [:)]

[/quote]

Got another one for you then.

Don't use padlocks on doors, however big the padlock is. They (Insurance Co.) need a proper lock in the door with a key, another little gem we got caught out on.

We had 2 big boys padlocks on the workshop door,  they somehow managed to cut them, ( the bolt cutters must have been huge) then cleared out the workshop, tools plus the mower.

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[quote user="Sunday Driver"][quote user="Chancer"]

There is no law saying that you should insure your ride on mower,

[/quote]

According to the cour de cassation, la loi du 5 juillet 1985 says you must .....[;-)]

[/quote]

Rubbish!

Have you read le loi du 5 Juillet?

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Thanks Coops; understood.

Steve, I have heard about the "padlock clause". I was advised when the insurance agent first visited us. I have one sliding door in an outbuilding which is particularly difficult to secure any other way, as far as I can see anyway. Proper locks are excruciatingly expensive aren't they??!!

 

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Of course the victim or victims of the unforeseen accident caused by your "tondeuse à gazon" will be covered by the "Fonds de Garantie" in respect of a default in obligatory assurance.

BUT they will still get you under the Criminal Law & the "partie civile" could be outrageously expensive.

Cour de Cassation is equivalent to the old House of Lords Appeal on a "point of law"....something to do now with a building previously used by the Middlesex Town Council in parliament square.

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[quote user="Chancer"][quote user="Sunday Driver"][quote user="Chancer"]

There is no law saying that you should insure your ride on mower,

[/quote]

According to the cour de cassation, la loi du 5 juillet 1985 says you must .....[;-)]

[/quote]

Rubbish!

Have you read le loi du 5 Juillet?

[/quote]

This section of the Loi du 5 juillet was quoted to me by a neighbour when I purchased my ride on mower

ème
Chambre civile, 24 juin 2004 (Bull. n° 308)

Appelée, pour la première fois, à se prononcer sur la question de savoir si une tondeuse à gazon dite "auto-portée" ou "auto-tractée" était ou non un véhicule terrestre à moteur au sens de la loi du 5 juillet 1985, la deuxième chambre civile de la Cour de cassation, s'inscrivant dans une continuité jurisprudentielle qui l'a conduite à reconnaître cette qualification juridique à des engins motorisés divers, notamment agricoles, a répondu par l'affirmative.

Ainsi, la deuxième chambre civile approuve-t-elle les juges du fond d'avoir retenu, pour lui appliquer la loi précitée, que la tondeuse à gazon "auto-portée" à l'origine de l'accident subi par un enfant qui en avait chuté alors qu'il se tenait assis sur les genoux de la personne qui la conduisait "était un engin à moteur doté de quatre roues lui permettant de circuler, équipé d'un siège sur lequel une personne prend place pour le piloter".

Il n'a pas échappé à la deuxième chambre civile que la soumission d'un engin de cette nature à la loi du 5 juillet 1985 aurait pour conséquence inévitable de l'assujettir à l'assurance automobile obligatoire.

Aussi consciente du fait que les contrats d'assurance de type "multirisques habitation" pouvaient expressément exclure - comme c'était précisément le cas dans l'espèce qui lui était soumise - la garantie de l'assureur en cas d'accident, fût-il "domestique", survenant du fait de l'utilisation d'un tel engin qualifié de véhicule terrestre à moteur, il lui est apparu qu'il devrait appartenir aux fabricants et aux revendeurs de tondeuses ainsi motorisées, mais aussi - du moins lorsqu'ils sont avisés par un assuré de la détention d'un matériel de ce type - aux assureurs, tenus envers leurs assurés d'un devoir d'information et de conseil, d'attirer particulièrement l'attention des possesseurs de tels engins sur la nécessité de souscrire, au cas ou leur contrat d'assurance ne la garantirait pas, une police complémentaire couvrant la responsabilité qu'ils seraient susceptibles d'encourir du fait des dommages causés par ces véhicules.

 

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The 1985 law may not mention ride-on mowers, but that's not the point.  It does mention motor vehicles (véhicules terrestres à moteur, or "VTM"), and the decision of the court was that a ride-on mower is a VTM for this purpose; so it is subject to the same insurance requirement as any other VTM, i.e. compulsory insurance against third-party liability resulting from its operation.

As always, it's useful to distinguish between compulsory and optional insurance.  The law says nothing at all about insuring your mower against loss, theft, damage, etc: that's up to you. 

(edited) PS: the cover may already be provided in your household policy.  It is in mine, under the heading Responsabilité Civile Vie Privée, as long as the mower isn't more powerful than 20 CV.

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Prompt reply from my agent this morning; the mower is covered by my home policy, up to 20cv as previously mentioned, but only within my own property boundary. It is also covered for theft if kept in a locked garage. 

I only go out on the road on it when my wife has the car and I have urgent need to go to the shops in Chef-Boutonne 13 kms away! [:-))] It's really humiliating being overtaken by a sans-permis! [:D]

[;-)][:D][;-)]

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[quote user="allanb"]The 1985 law may not mention ride-on mowers, but that's not the point.  It does mention motor vehicles (véhicules terrestres à moteur, or "VTM"), and the decision of the court was that a ride-on mower is a VTM for this purpose; so it is subject to the same insurance requirement as any other VTM, i.e. compulsory insurance against third-party liability resulting from its operation.

As always, it's useful to distinguish between compulsory and optional insurance.  The law says nothing at all about insuring your mower against loss, theft, damage, etc: that's up to you. 

(edited) PS: the cover may already be provided in your household policy.  It is in mine, under the heading Responsabilité Civile Vie Privée, as long as the mower isn't more powerful than 20 CV.
[/quote]

I disagree, although I dont have the time to read the whole appeal court judgement again so you may well prove me wrong, the 1985 law sets out the responsibility of insurers for the compulsory insurance of motorised vehicles used on the highway, the cover is also extended when the vehicle is used off the highway or on private land. In the case of an corporal accident due to the negligence of the driver the assureur of the vehicle is held to indemnise the victim not the public liability assureur of the driver, if the driver did not carry insurance the French equivalent of the M.I.B. would pick up the tab, not the drivers civil liability insurance if he had one.

The jurisprudence that came out of the appeal court ruling was to give gain de cause to the resposibilité civile insurers of the woman operating the drive on mower who refused to pay out citing that it was a motorised vehicle and could therefore have carried its own insurance, not that any existed at the time of course!

 Nowhere anywhere is there a law stating that ride on mowers have to carry their own insurance  it is just extrapolation by forum legal experts and greedy insurance companies hoping to sell policies that they are very very unlikely to ever have to pay out on, which seems par for the course in France.

Now if anyone is concerned that they might injure someone with their ride on mower and that thanks to the appeal court ruling they will no longer be covered by their responsibilité civile cover, if indeed they have it (I dont), then they can decide for themselves whether to subscribe to a specific insurance, now that the insurers have created a policy for a market that they themselves have created by their lamentable actions.

Be warned if you do have a specific motor mower insurance and decide to venture out on the road that apart from the risks of getting clobbered by the G_men the insurers will find a way to wriggle out of their responsibilité. 

There was a well publicised case of a youth who was left tetraplegic after an off road accident on his off road motocross bike, his mother had insisted he insure it, the local AXA agent was more than happy to sell a policy for a non road registered and non conforming bike, in the space for the registration number he wrote "pas matriculée". After the accident the youths insurers refused to pay out as he wasnt riding on the road at the time of the accident, they would by law though have had to pay had he injured someone else.

Happily after many a television exposé program they finally paid out to the boys family, the programs never mentioned the names of the insurer but they made great mention of the companies siege sociale being two towers in La Defense Paris  which was a bit of a giveaway, the footage shot in front of them was reversed as always but sadly AXA is spelt the same in either direction [:D]

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  • 2 weeks later...
[quote user="Chancer"]I disagree...   Nowhere anywhere is there a law stating that ride on mowers have to carry their own insurance  it is just extrapolation by forum legal experts and greedy insurance companies...[/quote]

Sorry, but I'm quite sure you're wrong.  The law consists not only of statutes, but also of decisions and regulations referring to those statutes.  In this case I don't think any legal training is needed:

- the 1985 law says that a motor vehicle ("VTM") must be insured against third-party liability;

- the court decision was that a ride-on mower is a VTM;

- therefore a ride-on mower must be insured against third-party liability.

Which part of that do you disagree with?

If you still need convincing, this was part of the report, showing that the court was fully aware of the effect of its decision: Il n'a pas échappé à la deuxième chambre civile que la soumission d'un engin de cette nature à la loi du 5 juillet 1985 aurait pour conséquence inévitable de l'assujettir à l'assurance automobile obligatoire.

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The effective word in this case is "extrapolation", You have given a very good example of just that;

I should add that I am not a legal expert, forum or otherwise, just someone I hope with a minor amount of common sense.

I dont need convincing as it is of little interest to me other than to observe people being convinced that they have to insure lawn mowers or disused vehicles even when kept off of the public highway.

If ever I have any grass and get a ride on mower I shant lose any sleep waiting for my door to be kicked down in the middle of the night by the G-Men as they are not currently interested in any of my uninsured vehicles or trailers.

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