Car crash

[notagooddayallround]

Namechanged.

Yesterday I was involved in a minor car crash. Was at a junction, thought the lights were still green, turns out they had gone red and bumped into the car in front at very low speed. No damage to my car (bar the little plastic bumper just popping out) but his car was a bit smashed in, light box smashed, scratches and dents in one corner. Ok.
Drove round corner to exchange phone, name and Reg.

Both drove away from accident happy that he would go and get quotes tomorrow and let me know, as we didn't want to take it through insurance.

I checked his reg this eve on DVLA website and it is mot'd but only has a SORN. Can anyone advise if I should just take this through my insurance?? I haven't been driving long (2-3 years) so obviously don't want my premiums going up massively.

if the vehicle is SORN it's not insured to be on the road as far as I'm aware as it's got no valid MOT as such you can't get valid insurance.

Wrong! They are 3 completely separate issues. A car can be fully insured and MOT'd yet still be on SORN. And even if it was on SORN, uninsured, and had no MOT, the OP is still responsible for the damage.

The insurance, if there was any in force, is still valid even if the car is on sorn. In the same way your house insurance is still valid even if you've not paid your council tax. Separate issues.

You did the right thing OP. Paying direct is often a can of worms. You have insurance for a reason! Keep an eye on things and watch he doesn't do you for £££ car hire and/or whiplash.

All these people assuming that the other driver must be dodgy because he didn't want to go through insurance, I think WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll has a very good point:

"Yes, very likely - it does seem extremely unfair to him that he might be given a few quid to replace his trusty old workhouse with a completely unknown one, as a 'punishment' for having had somebody pile into the back of him.

There's a world of difference between the battered 25yo old car you've owned from when it was 5yo and know inside out and having to risk buying an unknown 25yo car - even though the (very small) market value might be identical."

My car is about 16 yeas old but, it is in fairly decent shape - one careful lady owner and all that, less than 50,000 on the clock and I have had it serviced annually. I would definitely expect it to pass its next MOT.

However, if it were values it would probably only fetch a few £100 - certainly less than £1000. If OP had crunched the back of my car and did considerable damage and the insurers decided to write it off I would be well pissed off and out of pocket. No way would I be able to replace it with one I trust as much so would no doubt end up very out of pocket.

This did happen to my late Mum's DP some years ago and he couldn't afford another car for ages afterwards.

@Craft1905 example 1

Most insurance requires in-date tax and MOT as a condition of cover. Read your small print. Only, and only if, he was driving to a pre-booked (and is able to prove this - ie I call the company he is claiming he’s booked with) could being on a public highway whilst declaring SORN not an offence. Declaring SORN is an active decision, and to continue to use vehicle....

It’s no doubt one of the older diesels with high tax.

I've had accident repairs paid for by another driver( not through insurance. It was mutually agreed as the damage was £150 and probably less than the excess on his insurance. It saved us both a lot of hassle ,and him no loss of no claims.

@Craft1905 I also didn't say anything about her refusing to pay.

I simply said that she should contact the police to report the driver for driving illegally.

And it's not a far leap to think if he's driving a sorn vehicle he probably doesn't have insurance.

You can buy back a low value car from the insurers after it is written off and use the balance for repairs. Not a lot of people know that.

Most insurance requires in-date tax and MOT as a condition of cover.

It really doesn't - maybe you should read your own small print before pontificating on things you know nothing about.

Most insurance requires in-date tax and MOT as a condition of cover.

Utter drivel.

I simply said that she should contact the police to report the driver for driving illegally.

Yes, so they can seal off the ports and airports!

They will laugh you out of the station.

You can report the incident to the police and state the vehicle registration number. It might well be flagged up on a road camera.

Most people who have a SORN car will not be paying for a normal car insurance it will be one which covers theft etc. If I had a car which was off the road I would be getting the right sort of insurance for it.

@Craft1905 as you seem to ignored the first one. See attached.

Prosecution & £2500 fine.

Not sure they'll be laughing OP out of the station.

I would report it as you had an accident with it and illegal drivers should be kept off the roads

If someone is driving an uninsured car, and very likely " staging" an accident, chances are they are involved in other nefarious activities. The police will take action.

It would still be her fault though. He's entitled to stop if it's green. "I thought I saw a child about to run out but it turned out to be a crisp packet in the wind" She should have been far enough back to allow for his unexpected stop. So it's all irrelevant. Plus we'll never know what colour the lights were.

Yes, technically her fault - that's the whole point of an accident scam, after all - but far from irrelevant. If the other driver is a known scammer, it changes everything, especially the willingness of her insurers to pay out, and decreases the likelihood that he gets to do it again to someone else. Plus a lot of junctions have CCTV so the facts of what happened may well be discoverable. I would be surprised if the police are uninterested, though their enquiries may turn out to be a dead end, in which case the OP will be no worse off than at present.

@notagooddayallround

If it makes you feel better I did this but the their way around. Lights were red, changed to green, I moved, the car in front didn't. Literally just tapped the back, reversed and the driver in front got out......it was an unmarked police car!! Fortunately there was no damage to either car but wow did my heartbeat soar when I saw his uniform. He was pretty hot though 😉

You can buy back a low value car from the insurers after it is written off and use the balance for repairs. Not a lot of people know that.

How does that work then?

Suppose someone did £1000 worth of damage to my car, which is only valued at £300, presumably the insurers would write it off.

Would I get £300?
And if I did and I asked to buy it back from them, surely they would charge me £300 wouldn't they?
So your money or your car?

Where does this balance come from that could be used towards repairs?

I am seeing that I would end up with the car and then have to fork out the £1000 myself for the repairs - if I really wanted to keep the car. Or very likely pay a a lot more than £300 for another one.

Either way I would be the loser through no fault of my own.

A cat C ( cosmetic) repair might only cost you say £200 if you had the work done cheaply. A £300 car might have a sound engine and chassis and be worth holding onto even it is means say the busted red door is replaced with a purple one from the scrapyard .

Conditions of insurance are overall to adhere to the Road Traffic Act. No tax means the police can stop you under the Road Traffic Act. And yes, it can invalidate insurance.

www.deferolaw.com/driving-without-road-tax/

Why we’re even arguing over someone not abiding by the law (paying car tax) is incredible.

As they say, only on MN. The OP went into the back of him. She’s asking if going ‘cash’ to sort out the damage, and had the brains to check if he was legal. That doesn’t absolve her of responsibility, but it stands as a fact in its own right. The problem is the DVLA don’t follow up properly and the police have had repeated attacks on their funding and don’t have the capacity to sit in a side road or follow and nick someone flaunting the law. They’re pretty much always going to another job if you see them out in vehicles.

And don’t get me started on non-use of car seats, using phone while driving and smoking with kids in the car. Not really bothered if driver doesn’t wear seatbelt, they’ve only got themselves to blame when they smash thru the windscreen.

@stokieginge
Please explain to me where your post of a picture of a google search mentions insurance? It is indeed illegal to drive a SORN car unless to a prebooked MOT station but it does not invalidate insurance. It really really doesn’t.

I have a 30 year old car that I sometimes SORN for a while. Then I put it back on the road. If the MOT expires during a SORN period, I will drive it straight to the testing station.

At ALL times it is FULLY insured, for theft, for damage for TP damage, the whole works. The insurance is categorically not invalidated by the SORN or lack of MOT.
However if the TP in the situation is SORN and not driving to a pre booked MOT the the chances are they may not have purchased insurance as they may not have anything legal about the car.

Those screeen shots are irrelevant to insurance.

@QuitMoaning the screen shot was regarding it being illegal to drive a SORN vehicle for anything other than to an MOT!

Quitmoaning is quite right. tax, insurance and MOT are 3 different things. Not having and MOT or tax may be illegal, but it does not effect insurance. If insurance was invalidated because you did something illegal, you would be uninsured if you were doing 31mph in a 30 limit, or parked on a yellow line at the wrong time, or had a blown headlight bulb.

I wish people would stop repeating this nonsense about insurance being invalid just because you did something else wrong.

@Craft1905 @QuitMoaning