MSE News: Now you must have car insurance

miller

luckymannn wrote: »

Yeah so if someone comes along today, and wants to buy his old car with cash today, they won't be able to drive it away there and then because it will be SORNed and possibly have no tax if the seller has sent it off for a refund?

Yes, this is going to cause a lot of inconvenience for the private second hand market.

Trying to think of a way round it. As far as I understand it you can drive a SORN'd car to a prebooked MOT test (there is nothing stated about the MOT needing to be expired). So finding an MOT centre where a reasonable route would go past/near your destination after the sale could be advantageous on the off chance the Old Bill tug you.

Its either that, pay a low loader or wait for the insurance paperwork/tax to come through (and in the meantime the seller could vanish with the car and your money).

lisyloo

and in the meantime the seller could vanish with the car and your money

Would it not be sensible to pay a deposit whilst tax and insurance is put in place?
Less risk that way.
Isn't that exactly what deposits are for??

luckymannn

Saw an official advert for this new law on Sky One today, after the Simpsons.

jago25_98

This is pretty major. In the last week I've seen a lot of temporary insurance companies offering temp insurance for rarely used things like Motorhomes and motorcycles.

jamesallen

Not only is this very annoying, but it will have absolutely no affect on uninsured drivers.

Surely someone already flouting the law with a lack of insurance will be happy to falsely SORN their vehicle, stick a photocopy of a tax disk on the windscreen, and continue to drive as normal, running the same risk of being caught they did before. The only difference will be that they're marginally more likely to be caught out for tax by a traffic warden when parked.

And that's just the ones who will acknowledge they own the car at all, so doesn't include cars traded around in dodgy deals, stolen, pooled, with false plates, etc.etc.

mikey72

A chat to my insurers proved interesting.

Admittedly it's on a classic car, and they can do laid up insurance for £40. (not owned by me or my spouse, but in the family).
They tell me it'll show as insured on askmid. So we don't need to declare sorn.
My insurance lets me drive otherwise uninsured cars on third party, so I can still drive the car around to keep it runiing. Not good if I have an accident though, as I have to pay for the classic car, but still a completely legal way to drive an otherwise uninsured car on the road. It will cost £40 a year extra though.

jamesallen

mikey72 wrote: »

A chat to my insurers proved interesting.

Admittedly it's on a classic car, and they can do laid up insurance for £40. (not owned by me or my spouse, but in the family).
They tell me it'll show as insured on askmid. So we don't need to declare sorn.
My insurance lets me drive otherwise uninsured cars on third party, so I can still drive the car around to keep it runiing. Not good if I have an accident though, as I have to pay for the classic car, but still a completely legal way to drive an otherwise uninsured car on the road. It will cost £40 a year extra though.

I wonder if this would be possible for a non-classic?

uk_messer

Not really a big deal. You already have to be insured to have road tax. So all this does it get rid of the loophole of having a month's insurance to get 12 months road tax.

jamesallen

uk_messer wrote: »

Not really a big deal. You already have to be insured to have road tax. So all this does it get rid of the loophole of having a month's insurance to get 12 months road tax.

Yes but there are still plenty of situations where this could be very annoying, and it will achieve nothing.

Say I buy a new car, and switch over the insurance. I want to sell the old one privately, and I will use temporary insurance to allow others to test-drive the car on two separate days. At present, I can just leave it on the drive, insure it when necessary, and then sell it when I'm done, with the tax still on. Now, I have to send off the tax and SORN it (will take a good few days to be processed), and when I want someone to test drive it, I'll probably have to send off another form and remove the SORN, retax it for one day (costly if there are cash-flow issues, and I'll have to get another refund). Ridiculous hassle for law-abiding people.

Say I have a classic car which I drive only on a couple of occasions a month. Previously, I could use temp insurance, but now I'll have to plan ahead, get SORNs and tax sorted, and so on.

Say I forget my renewal is coming up, remember two days beforehand, but am very busy. If I have no time to shop around, I'll probably end up accepting auto-renewal, or shopping around insufficiently. Either way, I lose out.

And what happens to the non-law-abiding? They just SORN it and drive it anyway, or say they no longer own it, or anything to fob off the DVLA's inspectors.

Plus the increase in tax and SORN requests will inundate an agency which is almost certainly enduring some government cuts at the moment.

Call me a weirdo, but personally I don't think the government should make it its business to constantly increase the needless demands of ineffective bureaucracies on its citizens, which put them to considerable inconvenience and financial outlay...

uk_messer

Yes but there are still plenty of situations where this could be very annoying, and it will achieve nothing.

It will get rid of more uninsured drivers off the road. Currently their car can only be seized whilst they're seen driving it.

It should also get rid of the dodgy private car sellers who use the high roads as a forecourt.