ask MID

Weird_Nev

Wig wrote: »

Can you quote any law or case law to back up that statement?

This Document describes the range of checks that might normally be considered before seizing a vehicle. If i was seizing a vehicle then Amongst other things, MID showing the vehicle as not insured would be a big part of the grounds I had, along with the other checks I had done.

Wig wrote: »

But it is often inaccurate and should not be relied upon by police solely as reason to impound a vehicle.

Who said solely? If MID says not insured, Driver can't give the name of the insurer they purchased insurance with, a bit of ringing around leaves us none the wiser, and the whole thing is unravelling, what are we left with? An uninsired driver.

ANY legitimate driver will be able to help police find out insurance details. For example, I drive my wifes company car. I know the name of the insurer, they can verify that the car is permitted to be driven by sposes. It would take 5 mins to sort out at the roadside.

Wig wrote: »

Doen't mean it doesn't happen.....
And if the insurer was closed, you would have incorrectly seized a vehicle and given the couple an immense amount of inconvieneince and costs. Take the OP to this thread, for example, he is insured, and yet if you stopped him at night you would impound his vehicle. And that would be "a vehicle that didn't need seizing"

"Insurer closed".... We have 24/7 police liason contact numebrs you know. All but the smallest insurer is contactable round the clock. And insurance companies, by and large, tend to be big financial organisations.

Of course mistakes can happen. But generally speaking with insurance, the more you dig the dodgier things get.

Wig wrote: »

Again perfectly legal to do so and easily proven in the day time with a call to his insurer, at night time, he should be given a producer if he is able to identify his own insurance policy.

:rotfl:Fronting is legal now is it?
Driving an uninsured vehicle "hoping" that because of some circuitous route you're covered by some other policy in existance? More often than not you're treading on thin ice and an insurer will drop you like a hot rock. Check small print, phone your insurer BEFORE you drive. IF you've come up with some clever plan to drive a car you would not normally afford to insure, the likelyhood is someone else has thought of it before you and the insurers T&C's will specifically prohibit such actions (for example the car you're driving third party might need to be registered in anothers name, belong to another, and have in force it's OWN policy of insurance - who knows, only small print or a phone call will clear it up).
And producers are being/have been phased out as it's recognised that they're not an effective means of dealing with documentation offences.
Trade policies are widely abused. Most trade policies are of course fine, and true traders/mechanics realise the value of a traders policy and don't mess around.
I've stopped 18 year olds in £60k BMW M5's on "trade policies" that turn out to be completely illegitimate - only mechanics driving the car for business reasons are covered, over 25 years of age, not the garage owners son on a Saturday night. But stop them and they say "Nah, I'm on my dads trade policy, I can drive anything innit". Not once you've phoned the insurer and told them what's going on they can't.

Wig, do you have any policing experience?

You're assuming a huge amount from my post. Of course it's not a case of "MID says not insured, so seize it". You have to explore every avenue at the roadside. We have more than JUST the MID database but it's a useful jumping off point and in general is very accurate and quickly updated in my experience. IF it's saying not insured, then there's more work to do.

In summary, my experience of stopping vehicles is this:

Legitimate, insured driver: Everything resolved at the roadside within 5 minutes, Driver on their way.

Uninsured driver: MID says not insured, you get some long winded story about a car purchased a week ago, a third party policy, driving other cars, oh no, my name's not spelt like that, oh, it's in my other name, try that, No, I did buy insurance but the certificate hasn't been posted yet, no it's my dads car not mine, he's just lent it to me....

What it all boils down to is they're uninsured and they need their car seizing because they're a menace.

MID is a useful start point, not an end point.

dacouch

Weird_Nev wrote: »

:rotfl:Fronting is legal now is it?
Driving an uninsured vehicle "hoping" that because of some circuitous route you're covered by some other policy in existance? More often than not you're treading on thin ice and an insurer will drop you like a hot rock. Check small print, phone your insurer BEFORE you drive. IF you've come up with some clever plan to drive a car you would not normally afford to insure, the likelyhood is someone else has thought of it before you and the insurers T&C's will specifically prohibit such actions (for example the car you're driving third party might need to be registered in anothers name, belong to another, and have in force it's OWN policy of insurance - who knows, only small print or a phone call will clear it up).

I've stopped 18 year olds in £60k BMW M5's on "trade policies" that turn out to be completely illegitimate - only mechanics driving the car for business reasons are covered, over 25 years of age, not the garage owners son on a Saturday night. But stop them and they say "Nah, I'm on my dads trade policy, I can drive anything innit". Not once you've phoned the insurer and told them what's going on they can't.

Wig, do you have any policing experience?

You're assuming a huge amount from my post. Of course it's not a case of "MID says not insured, so seize it". You have to explore every avenue at the roadside. We have more than JUST the MID database but it's a useful jumping off point and in general is very accurate and quickly updated in my experience. IF it's saying not insured, then there's more work to do.

I think you're miss understanding what fronting is.

Your understanding of who could potentially drive on a motor trade policy is not correct. A motortrade policy can cover proprietors and their partners even their family including 17 year sons, employees and possibly their partners and customers. Obviously they have to be accepted as drivers on a policy and may have they use of vehicles restricted to say sdp or business use but can include class 1 business use for a different business for say a proprietors partner, it may also restrict what vehicles they can use if they're young and / or newly qualified.

I know of plenty of genuine garages who have their 17 year old children on their policy who are legally covered to drive for SDP use only. The Insurers are picky on what cars they will cover them for, it's considerably cheaper for the parent than a normal insurance so plenty of them do it

I'm guessing you tend to pull the smaller motortraders who have the road risks only policies which are the ones that tend to be abused and have lots of restrictions.

The MID is between 90% and 95% accurate which basically means around 1 in 20 will be wrong

mikey72

A bit worrying, as my policy also lets me drive any car not owned by me or my partner, without any other insurance required. So askmid wouldn't turn anything up.

Weird_Nev

dacouch wrote: »

I think you're miss understanding what fronting is.

Your understanding of who could potentially drive on a motor trade policy is not correct. A motortrade policy can cover proprietors and their partners even their family including 17 year sons, employees and possibly their partners and customers. Obviously they have to be accepted as drivers on a policy and may have they use of vehicles restricted to say sdp or business use but can include class 1 business use for a different business for say a proprietors partner, it may also restrict what vehicles they can use if they're young and / or newly qualified.

I know of plenty of genuine garages who have their 17 year old children on their policy who are legally covered to drive for SDP use only. The Insurers are picky on what cars they will cover them for, it's considerably cheaper for the parent than a normal insurance so plenty of them do it

I'm guessing you tend to pull the smaller motortraders who have the road risks only policies which are the ones that tend to be abused and have lots of restrictions.

The MID is between 90% and 95% accurate which basically means around 1 in 20 will be wrong

Again, you're assuming. I was tlaking about two separate things.

Fronting: Declaring that one person (usually lower risk) is the policyholder and main driver when in fact the car is almost exclusively used by a named driver, usually much higher risk. To be honset, it's not something the police have much dealings with - to the letter of the law, the named driver is correctly insured. They MAY have made false declarations to obtain the insurance, but that's hard to prove. It's their insurance company who won't be happy that they are insuring a MUCH higher risk than they quoted for.

Trade Policies: I was talking about them completely separate to fronting.
Yes, I am fully aware that by and large they are correctly used.
There are significant abuses however.
Mine was just one example. Do you honestly think that any insurer would knowingly take on the risk of an 18 year old male in central London driving a 500BHP car on a Saturday night? You could honestly hear the insurers chin hit the desk when I told them what had happened. And the Garage owners son had never done a days work in the garage either. It was straight abuse of a trade policy - the car was seized at the time (and the son arrested as it happens as it was a customers car) and the trade policy was withdrawn by the insurer because the dad had allowed this to happen.

The ins and outs of insurance are very complex. No two policies are alike, and trade policies vary wildly in their stipulations. You have to do significant digging. My point is this: I'm instantly suspicious of anyone saying "I'm on a trade policy, I can drive what I like". They tend to be wrong. People who have legitimate trade policies tend to be very careful about them because they mean so much to their business and livelyhood.

I'll say again, the MID is a start point, not an end point.

Weird_Nev

mikey72 wrote: »

A bit worrying, as my policy also lets me drive any car not owned by me or my partner, without any other insurance required. So askmid wouldn't turn anything up.

It's be a simple case of phoning your insurer and verifying that condition exists on your policy, and that the car is indeed someone elses (another phone call, couple of computer checks).
On your way within 5 minutes.
Be aware of the difficulties around driving a car with NO policy of it's own in force though - It's uninsured when parked for example, and it could be held that you are "using" an uninsured vehicle though I'm not personally aware of situations where people have been prosecuted for this.

dacouch

Weird_Nev wrote: »

Again, you're assuming. I was tlaking about two separate things.

Fronting: Declaring that one person (usually lower risk) is the policyholder and main driver when in fact the car is almost exclusively used by a named driver, usually much higher risk. To be honset, it's not something the police have much dealings with - to the letter of the law, the named driver is correctly insured. They MAY have made false declarations to obtain the insurance, but that's hard to prove. It's their insurance company who won't be happy that they are insuring a MUCH higher risk than they quoted for.

Trade Policies: I was talking about them completely separate to fronting.
Yes, I am fully aware that by and large they are correctly used.
There are significant abuses however.
Mine was just one example. Do you honestly think that any insurer would knowingly take on the risk of an 18 year old male in central London driving a 500BHP car on a Saturday night? You could honestly hear the insurers chin hit the desk when I told them what had happened. And the Garage owners son had never done a days work in the garage either. It was straight abuse of a trade policy - the car was seized at the time (and the son arrested as it happens as it was a customers car) and the trade policy was withdrawn by the insurer because the dad had allowed this to happen.

The ins and outs of insurance are very complex. No two policies are alike, and trade policies vary wildly in their stipulations. You have to do significant digging. My point is this: I'm instantly suspicious of anyone saying "I'm on a trade policy, I can drive what I like". They tend to be wrong. People who have legitimate trade policies tend to be very careful about them because they mean so much to their business and livelyhood.

I'll say again, the MID is a start point, not an end point.

The part of your post relating to fronting is about someone driving another car under the DOC part of their policy. Your most recent post contains a copy and paste of what actually fronting is. Abuse of DOC is not fronting.

For the record the vehicle a person is driving under DOC does not always have to be insured for the doc to be valid. There are still plenty of Insurers who do not stipulate in their policies and state on the certificate that the other vehicle needs to be insured. Under these circumstances they would be covered by the policy.

It's still possible but now relatively rare for a motor trade Insurer to cover an 18 year old for private use and who does not work at the garage to be covered to drive a 500bhp car. For instance the owner of a Ferrari or high end exotic dealer would expect his son to be covered for exotic cars and by and large would get it obviously at a cost.

I remember a couple of years ago, a fleet customer of mine had a driver in a bentley (Which his 18 year old son was covered to drive) was pulled over by the police. The vehicle showed on the MID but the policeman was determined to seize it. They called me, I explained he was covered as it was for Any Driver. He would not accept this as the MID said driver was restricted to "No restriction noted" which was the way of noting any driver. He would not accept it from me, I spoke to the Insurer who confirmed he was covered, the MID was correct and the traffic officer was welcome to call them directly. The police office refused this and was determined to seize the car. It was only stopped when I rang the police station, explained the situation and gave them the Insurers number.

Abuses do happen with motor trade policies especially at the non premises road risk end. Everytime I see a new motortrade customer they tell me they can ride / drive anything etc etc. I always explain to them that this is not always true and go through with them what they currently have with their current insurer as they do not normally understand

dacouch

Weird_Nev wrote: »

It's be a simple case of phoning your insurer and verifying that condition exists on your policy, and that the car is indeed someone elses (another phone call, couple of computer checks).
On your way within 5 minutes.

The only problem with that is the vast majority of Insurers call center staff do not understand the minute detail of their policy and will quote what they know from the pub.

Bearing in mind that with the majority of companies I deal with, the quality of staff handling our queries is higher than deal with the general public. I can guarantee that if I called an Insurer that did not stipulate the other car has to be insured under DOC ten times. Then at least 6 (Probably higher) would quote from their pub knowledge and tell me the other car has to be insured.

We get lots of complaints on MSE about First Central Insurance who can take months to update the MID and sometimes never. The people often discover this when pulled by the police. As they are a newish online Insurer I would not be surprised if the people cannot remember the Insurer name and then have to tell the police "I bought it online from some company but have no documents" which must ring alarm bells. Assuming the police can track which Insurer it is, they are renowned for taking ridiculous amounts of time to answer the phone. Whether their dedicated MIB response line is answered promptly I don't know

It can't be easy for traffic officers as the MIB system and Insurers still have a way to go before the system becomes more fool proof.

vikingaero

More and more Insurers are undertaking credit checks and only offering payment of insurance by instalments to those with a good credit history. Those with poor credit histories will only be offered insurance if the premium is paid in full up front thus helping to prevent the old "take out insurance and cancel the direct debit after a month" brigade.

As to the MID. Well our fleet comprising around 125 high mileage cars, vans and HGVs never appeared on the MID database for a couple of years. The fleet as a whole must have driven past tens of thousands of Police ANPR cars and ANPR cameras and not one vehicle was stopped. Despite reminding the Insurer 1001 times they never did anything.

Weird_Nev

dacouch wrote: »

The part of your post relating to fronting is about someone driving another car under the DOC part of their policy. Your most recent post contains a copy and paste of what actually fronting is. Abuse of DOC is not fronting.

No where did I say it was. Re-read my post. Perhaps I missed out a semi colon or something. I was giving a list of excuses people come up with as they try and convince police that they are insured.

And pray tell where I copy pasted the part about fronting from. I'd be interested to know, as I typed it out long hand myself. From my own knowledge.

Anyway, you make some interesting points, but like I say, we don't deal with call centre staff, we have police liason numbers to people who can tell us exactly what is what, and will provide evidential statements by return of fax if there's a problem.

And of course young people can be insured on high performance cars - it just sets alarm bells off that's all. I also stopped a 19 year old in a brand new Porsche GT3 RS a few years back. He was a student from Hong Kong, and he was fully insured. His dad payed a £15k a years premium for him.

Hintza

Insurance companies are like tarts these days you never remember which one you are currently in bed with.