Warning on not insuring vehicle whilst off the road.

[fisherman]

Just discovered another spiffing wheeze dreamt up by our by our so called public servants and their political masters in order to criminalize more of the basically law abiding public.

If have a vehicle off the road but taxed & you decide that you may put off insuring the vehicle because you may not be using it for a while then you will be committing and offence and can be fined up to £1000.

You must now declare a SORN if the vehicle is not insured even if it is off the road. If you have tax then you MUST have insurance.

[Dog]

You have done well to only just find this.

Sadly in France all motor vehicles must be insured whilst unused.

 

[Jay]

[quote user="Dog"]

Sadly in France all motor vehicles must be insured whilst unused.[/quote]

So they say. I took one of my cars off the road for over 6 months and the company dropped the insurance for me. Depends how friendly you are with the agent I suppose.

[Chancer]

[quote user="Dog"]

You have done well to only just find this.

Sadly in France all motor vehicles must be insured whilst unused.

[/quote]

Not true Dog, its just that the insurance companies make it as difficult as possible for you to ge out of their clutches.

It usually manifests itself when you have bought a new car and want to swop your insurance, you have not sold the old one either intending to keep it off road or to sell it at your leisure, they have you by the balls and they exploit it to the full.

If however you do a resiliation of contract within the prescribed period before the end of the insurance term, they may not like it, will probably tell you its against the law, probably believe it themselves having been fed cr*^p during their training and accepting everything as gospel, but when push comes to shove it will be accepted, just dont expect the courtesy of an acknowledgement.

And then there are the sprinkling of commercially minded agents like the one mentioned that just think, well that is reasonable, I want to keep this customer, we will work out a way to do this which will cover my back with the insurance company.

[JohnRoss]

When we moved here in 2001 we brought a Brit registered car over with us and insured with a French company. A few months later we bought a car here in France and took the old car off the road and stuck it in our barn for a year.

The insurance company tried to tell us that it must still be insured but agreed that this was not necessary if I was prepared to immobilise it which I did by removing the rotor arm..........JR

[nomoss]

An insurance company agent (actually a CA employee pushing Pacifica policies) informed me that all vehicles stored off the road still had to be insured.

She stated that if an uninsured vehicle caught fire and caused a building to be destroyed, then the building would not be covered.

[Clair]

[quote user="nomoss"]An insurance company agent ...informed me that all vehicles stored off the road still had to be insured.[/quote]

That is correct.

My sister had to insure her car, kept in her garage, for 8 months whilst she was working abroad.

[PaulT]

[quote user="fisherman"]Just discovered another spiffing wheeze dreamt up by our by our so called public servants and their political masters in order to criminalize more of the basically law abiding public. If have a vehicle off the road but taxed & you decide that you may put off insuring the vehicle because you may not be using it for a while then you will be committing and offence and can be fined up to £1000. You must now declare a SORN if the vehicle is not insured even if it is off the road. If you have tax then you MUST have insurance.[/quote]

This is not designed to 'criminalise' the law abiding motorist but to reduce the vast number of cars that are being driven without insurance and in some cases tax and MOT.

Near where I live in the UK is an A road that they regularly set up a number plate reader and pull in large numbers of cars that do not have insurance.

Personally, I do not want to be hit by an unisured driver.

Paul

[JohnRoss]

The fire risk is a valid point though not very likely if the battery is also removed. I suppose someone might torch it or the fuel line could leak and a live fag-end be dropped on it. In our case the barn was in a sorry state so its loss would not have been terrible though now yes it would since we had the roof replaced some time ago!

The French insurance for a vehicle is there for all to see on the windscreen and we were advised to carry the car documents with us in the car including those showing that the car had been through the French equivalent of the M.O.T. test together with the little CT sticker also on the windscreen. I understand it there is no road tax as such on ordinary cars here in France.

We did all the paperwork to officially export our Brit car when we came over and later on it was bought by someone who took it back to the UK and they must have done some paper work to keep the DVLA happy I guess.........JR

[fisherman]

Paul

I would agree if it was likely to stop the toads driving around without insurance. But it will not catch the cars which the owner does not bother to register in the first place. Also as you say the number plate readers do pick them up.

In fact if a SORN is declared then they drop off the radar for this offence. But not of course if they are caught driving on the road by the number plate reader which will flag up both that the car is not taxed or insured.

So where is the benefit of this new law. I don’t think it has been fully thought through. On the face of it is a good idea but perhaps they should have left things as they were. Then the authorities would know which cars were taxed but not insured and could conduct a few home visits to ensure that the car was not on the road.

I only came across this by chance when I was declaring a SORN. My guess is that there are many more motorists out there (particularly older ones) who will not know of this law.

Its just my opinion mind but my guess is that it will pick up more of those honest folk who are either forgetful or ignorant of this law and have no intention of taking an uninsured vehicle on the road rather than the toads it is aimed at.

[nomoss]

[quote user="fisherman"] You must now declare a SORN if the vehicle is not insured even if it is off the road. [/quote]

Exactly. SORN = Statutory Off Road Notification [:)]

Edit: Now applies even if the vehicle is taxed.

Edit: This was announced in January 2011 and came into effect in March http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/01/09/crackdown-on-uninsured-drivers-could-see-1-2m-cars-crushed-115875-22837085/

[PaulT]

[quote user="fisherman"]My guess is that there are many more motorists out there (particularly older ones) who will not know of this law.

Firstly, the Government is about to start an advertising campaign.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13493056

 Its just my opinion mind but my guess is that it will pick up more of those honest folk who are either forgetful or ignorant of this law and have no intention of taking an uninsured vehicle on the road rather than the toads it is aimed at.

How can they be forgetful. They will have received notices that their Road Fund Licence is due. If they have no intention of taking it on the road then they need to declare SORN and then do not require insurance, they will then get a notice once a year that SORN is about to expire and they need to declare SORN again. No doubt the notice will inform them of the requirements and consequences of having a vehicle without SORN if it is not insured

[/quote]

[mint]

Paul, I find myself agreeing with you on this topic as on many others.

"Older people" can be just as devious, irresponsible and dishonest as younger ones (surprise! surprise!)

I knew a Brit couple who lived for a few years in Cognac and had a SORN for their car, using a UK address, even though the car was kept in France.

Admittedly, they couldn't drive the car as it had something wrong with it but it was obviously untaxed and uninsured.

These were the same people who used to take both their campervan and their car (when it was going) back to the UK on a yearly basis, just to get them MOT'd.

As they say, there's nowt so queer as folk [:)]

[Dog]

So am I correct in thinking that the DVLC/Police are going to print out every vehicle registration number that doesn't show up on the insurance database and fine the owners?

What a wheeze to make easy money. Quite amusing when the police are not insured and statistically have more vehicle accidents than any other profession.

[Quillan]

Police cars, fire engines and ambulance's in the UK are 'bonded' as are bus's (well London ones were last I heard). About 20 years ago I was involved in an accident with a police car that jumped the lights and there was no problem getting money out of them to repair the car. The problem came afterwards, I sold the car and the bloke what bought it lived in the same area as the accident and kept getting stopped for some strange reason.

The biggest problem in the UK is 'constructed' accidents which is costing the insurers billions yet they (the insurance industry) still claim that it would be too expensive to take many of the cases to court for fraudulent claims (like 8 people in a family car (illegal) with no break lights (illegal) hit up the rear by another car and they all claim whiplash injuries yet they can't speak a word of English).

[Russethouse]

An advertising campaign about all this started last night.

[cooperlola]

[quote user="Quillan"]

The biggest problem in the UK is 'constructed' accidents which is costing the insurers billions yet they (the insurance industry) still claim that it would be too expensive to take many of the cases to court for fraudulent claims (like 8 people in a family car (illegal) with no break lights (illegal) hit up the rear by another car and they all claim whiplash injuries yet they can't speak a word of English).

[/quote]Yeah, right.  Because fraud is the natural preserve of the foreigner.   Give me a break.[:@]

[Quillan]

[quote user="cooperlola"][quote user="Quillan"]

The biggest problem in the UK is 'constructed' accidents which is costing the insurers billions yet they (the insurance industry) still claim that it would be too expensive to take many of the cases to court for fraudulent claims (like 8 people in a family car (illegal) with no break lights (illegal) hit up the rear by another car and they all claim whiplash injuries yet they can't speak a word of English).

[/quote]Yeah, right.  Because fraud is the natural preserve of the foreigner.   Give me a break.[:@][/quote]

Not something I relish saying but true in this case, mainly Eastern Europeans and Asians both of which equate to around 70% for fraudulent car insurance scams, have a look at the "Insurance Fraud Bureau" website and their conviction list. I did actually think the same as you, it can't be true, until I started reading these reports from their website. There are of course some 'Anglo Saxons' at it as well but not that many.

[cooperlola]

Just because they convict more non-WASPs doesn't necessarily mean that more of them commit the crime though.  And where does the idea that they can't speak any English come from?  Why do you think that might be?  Could it be that those behind these scams recruit them for just that reason?  That they don't speak English and thus get poorer legal advice?  That they are less well off and therefore vulnerable to this (very organised) crime?  There is a lot more to this type of fraud than the bare statistics show.  The companies already admit that most of the claims are not pursued.  I wonder which ones?[Www]

[Dog]

It's a big hype by the insurance companies to make more money - if so many johnny foreigners or anyone is making ridiculous trumped up false claims surely it's a stupid insurance company that pays out.

We are the idiots for paying these vultures who make fortunes.

[Salty Sam]

"It's a big hype by the insurance companies to make more money".

Speaking as an authority, perhaps????

[Quillan]

[quote user="cooperlola"]Just because they convict more non-WASPs doesn't necessarily mean that more of them commit the crime though.  And where does the idea that they can't speak any English come from?  Why do you think that might be?  Could it be that those behind these scams recruit them for just that reason?  That they don't speak English and thus get poorer legal advice?  That they are less well off and therefore vulnerable to this (very organised) crime?  There is a lot more to this type of fraud than the bare statistics show.  The companies already admit that most of the claims are not pursued.  I wonder which ones?[Www][/quote]

Sorry I don't know what a WASP or non WASP is.

Your right in some of what you say that many of those they catch are just working for somebody else but those people who speak English are also mainly of foreign extraction in most cases. It is a very well organised with companies set up to supply hire cars that don't exist, doctors who write false medical claims, even some of the loss adjusters have been found guilty. Where do I get the information from, well not from any newspaper but I do truthfully have somebody close to me who works almost continuously on these cases. The people that are involved in the actual accident get very little from it and are 'employed' specifically because they don't speak English. The problem the insurance companies have is do they pay out or do they fight, either way it still costs for the investigation. When this person first told me about all this I thought it was a joke because of the complexity and just who is involved but as time has gone on and I have heard (and in some cases read) more it does beggar belief but it is true.

[Rabbie]

[quote user="Quillan"]

Sorry I don't know what a WASP or non WASP is.

[/quote] WASP is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. It originates from the USA where I first came across it during JFKs election campaign. Incidentally JFK and Obama are the only two non-WASP presidents that I know of.