ask MID

Notmyrealname

mikey72 wrote: »

Yes it can.

Not on my policy. Any car I drive under the other vehicle extension has to be insured in its own right.

dacouch

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Not on my policy. Any car I drive under the other vehicle extension has to be insured in its own right.

There are however numerous Insurers who do not require the other vehicle to hold it's own Insurance including Aviva and Direct Line

Wig

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Not on my policy. Any car I drive under the other vehicle extension has to be insured in its own right.

Well that's bad news for you then, because most policies, including mine and mikey's do not have such a stipulation.

I agree with Mikey, that PaddedJohn is incorrect. The car will be insured whilst you are driving it, it will therefore satisfy Road Traffic Act requirements. It will have a valid tax disc, satisfying VERAct requirements. If you leave it on the road it will allegedly not be insured, I say allegedly because the scenario has not been through a test case to my knowledge, I can see a defence of saying:
"The vehicle was in my care under third party cover whilst I drove it to Birmingham, I stopped and went into a shop, or stopped to load an item, the vehicle was still under my care. It is a nonsense that I should not be allowed to reasonably stop on the highway to go about my business. My Third Party Cover should continue under these circumstances"

I will also remind everyone that the vehicle when left on the highway -under these circumstances- could not be seized by police, as it was not "being driven without insurance".

Going back to the subject of SORN, the RK should have SORNed it but the most that will happen to him will be a £100 fine if he fails to SORN it immediately when he receives a letter from DVLA.

Wig

kerrygirl wrote: »

The only thing that worries me about the new law is the prediciment I am in. I have a BMW that I am currently selling. It is on my drive way, however decided to cancel the insurance as no-one wants to buy it, esp over christmas, so thought I would start re-advertising in January. I decided not to make a SORN on the car just in case someone wants to test drive the car and I can contact my insurance company for a weeks cover.

However, now I need to insure the vehicle or make a SORN.

It's too costly to keep insured and will be too costly to re-insure and re-tax, hence the selling!

Does anyone know of a loophole? have contacted askMID but they confirmed that there isn't.

There is no loophole, you have to SORN now, or face the consequences, which will be a £100 fine from DVLA.... And if it has run out of tax there would also be an £80 fine for not SORN or Taxing

Out of interest what has happened?..... Has your tax run out (when did it run out)? or did you get a letter from DVLA telling you to SORN or insure?

I wonder what would happen if you did not SORN/insure and paid the £100.... what the next step would be for the DVLA?

If the vehicle was test driven whilst SORN and you double checked the buyers insurance cover with his insurers on the phone to make sure he was insured to drive your car before you allowed him to drive it...... The driver would commit an offence of driving without tax displayed. You would commit an offence of using a vehicle whilst SORN on the road. If caught you would get a big fine from DVLA and possibly a court appearance.

You would have to sell without a test drive, or transport the car on a trailer to an off road location for a test drive. Selling without test drive could reduce it's value, but isn't that what happens all the time on ebay sales?

As soon as someone buys the car the SORN declaration is immediately cancelled. To be legal any buyer would have to come with an insurance cert for the car and tax it at the PO or transport the car away. If they drive it home, they would not be driving a vehicle whilst SORN because the SORN is cancelled, but they would be driving an untaxed vehicle on the road, and DVLA will still fine them for that - not you, as long as you send off the V5C to DVLA to confirm change of ownership.

dacouch

Wig wrote: »

I agree with Mikey, that PaddedJohn is incorrect. The car will be insured whilst you are driving it, it will therefore satisfy Road Traffic Act requirements. It will have a valid tax disc, satisfying VERAct requirements. If you leave it on the road it will allegedly not be insured, I say allegedly because the scenario has not been through a test case to my knowledge, I can see a defence of saying:
"The vehicle was in my care under third party cover whilst I drove it to Birmingham, I stopped and went into a shop, or stopped to load an item, the vehicle was still under my care. It is a nonsense that I should not be allowed to reasonably stop on the highway to go about my business. My Third Party Cover should continue under these circumstances"

http://www.rjerrard.co.uk/law/cases/richards.htm one for the legal minds to dissect

thenudeone

Trebor16 wrote: »

So if the call centre tells the police that the policy was cancelled by the policyholder and is therefore not in effect you are saying that the police cannot seize the vehicle?

Well- in the stated case, the call centre WRONGLY told police that the "Driving other cars"extension did not apply because the car being driven did not have its own policy. In fact it did apply and the certificate for that cover was provided at the roadside.

The 3 conditions for a seizure are:
1) Police require production of insurance certificate
AND
2) a valid certificate is not produced
AND
3) police office has reason to believe that no insurance is in place.

The stated case didn't really clarify anything that wasn't pretty clear from the Act itself, it only clarified that the certificate needs to be any which provides cover to the driver whilst driving the vehicle (and not necessarily one which specifically mentions the stopped vehicle)

In the stated case, condition 2) was not satisfied, so everything else is irrelevant. The seizure was illegal.

In answer to your question, the answer is - it doesn't matter how strongly the police believe a vehicle is uninsured and what evidence they have to support that view (even from the insurance company), if a certificate from a valid and current policy is produced, any seizure would be illegal. In practice, however such seizures will still occur from time to time.

I wasn't aware of the other cases regarding certificates for cancelled policies. We'll probably have to wait for more cases. My guess is that if the insurance company complies with the notification requirements (which they don't always do, according to some forum posts) then a certificate from a cancelled policy would not be acceptable.

Altarf

Notmyrealname wrote: »

Yes, yes I do. Like anything they've got targets to meet. On a Road Wars episode, one copper even admitted it on camera - they had a situation where a stern telling off would have sufficed for a minor infraction but he said that as he had targets to meet, he couldn't.

That was the same episode where it was clear that if all else failed, then the police officer would issue a fixed penalty ticket if didn't think that someone was wearing a seatbelt.

As for whether the person receiving the ticket had actually been wearing a seatbelt or not, one of the police officers had been caught on camera lying about seeing something that they said they had seen but had not (and then refusing to apologise to the person that they had falsely accused). It therefore came across that the police knew full well that they could issue 'no seatbelt' tickets like confetti, and nobody would take it to court (there are no points involved), and even if they did, who would the magistrates believe.

Trebor16

thenudeone wrote: »

In answer to your question, the answer is - it doesn't matter how strongly the police believe a vehicle is uninsured and what evidence they have to support that view (even from the insurance company), if a certificate from a valid and current policy is produced, any seizure would be illegal. In practice, however such seizures will still occur from time to time.

All the police need is reasonable grounds and if they have been told by an insurance company that a person is not insured that would constitute reasonable grounds, regardless of whether or not a person is in possession of a certificate. In such circumstances a seizure would not be illegal. If it later transpires they have been given incorrect information then that changes things, but at the time they would have acted in good faith.

thenudeone wrote:

I wasn't aware of the other cases regarding certificates for cancelled policies. We'll probably have to wait for more cases. My guess is that if the insurance company complies with the notification requirements (which they don't always do, according to some forum posts) then a certificate from a cancelled policy would not be acceptable.

This is a scam that has been going on for years, long before the ability of the police to use the MID database. People would purchase a car insurance policy and then cancel it, but they would retain the insurance certificate, If they were ever stopped by police they would produce the ceritificate to show they were insured. It still goes on today, but police have the use of the MID database which makes it easier for them to deal with this scam there and then.

paddedjohn

Wig wrote: »

Well that's bad news for you then, because most policies, including mine and mikey's do not have such a stipulation.

I agree with Mikey, that PaddedJohn is incorrect. The car will be insured whilst you are driving it, it will therefore satisfy Road Traffic Act requirements. It will have a valid tax disc, satisfying VERAct requirements. If you leave it on the road it will allegedly not be insured, I say allegedly because the scenario has not been through a test case to my knowledge, I can see a defence of saying:
"The vehicle was in my care under third party cover whilst I drove it to Birmingham, I stopped and went into a shop, or stopped to load an item, the vehicle was still under my care. It is a nonsense that I should not be allowed to reasonably stop on the highway to go about my business. My Third Party Cover should continue under these circumstances"

I will also remind everyone that the vehicle when left on the highway -under these circumstances- could not be seized by police, as it was not "being driven without insurance".

Going back to the subject of SORN, the RK should have SORNed it but the most that will happen to him will be a £100 fine if he fails to SORN it immediately when he receives a letter from DVLA.

leaving a car on the highway without insurance is an offence, there is no way you would get away with using your doc unless you have registered the cars reg number with your insurance or there is a policy in force for the vehicle, this is why the new sorn regs came in, to stop people insuring one car and driving another.

Wig

paddedjohn wrote: »

leaving a car on the highway without insurance is an offence, there is no way you would get away with using your doc unless you have registered the cars reg number with your insurance or there is a policy in force for the vehicle, this is why the new sorn regs came in, to stop people insuring one car and driving another.

What are you on about?

Please make your post specific, there are two areas of my post you could be replying to.....
either
1) My comment about stopping whilst using 'DOC' where I quite clearly stated that it was alegedly uninsured because of the absence of case law. i.e. it would currently be viewed as uninsured until successfully challenged in a higher court. Obviously a lower court would rule it was uninsured. I was just thinking aloud on how it could be challenged in a higher court.

or
2) That of seizure of the vehicle, as this is the bit that you highlighted in red. If you think a vehicle standing on the highway, not having been driven uninsured, could be seized for having no insurance under the popular S.165A you are wrong. If you think otherwise, which law are you going to use?