MIB uninsured driver - advice needed

DMT03

Hi everyone, i need some advice and help....
in 2011 after saving for a while i decided to buy a Range Rover, not a new one but one that was in great condition 2.5, i paid £3500 and it was my pride and joy, after a few months of having it , i was driving along with my 4 year old daughter and approached some traffic lights and came to a stand still, ill explain the road layout a bit better.

Its a 30mph road and at the junction its a two lane, right to turn right, this is clearly marked by white chevrons.
The left lane is for 2nd right and straight on.

My intended direction of travel was to take the second right, as i set off and positioned myself into the right lane, of course checking my mirrors and everything there was a bang and a lot of shaking of our vehicle so i stopped and looked and realised the car which was at the side of me that should have turned right had crossed the chevrons and collided into the rear / corner of us at quite a force.

I got out to make sure they was ok and a witness appeared to say he had seen the whole incident and that the other driver was in the wrong and had crossed the lines failing to turn right, because it was quite busy on the road i suggested we move to a safe place as i had my daughter in the car who was at this point crying.

we pulled up to the talking point and the witness also came, i spoke to the driver of the car who stated it was my fault and he had done nothing wrong, he started been quite funny avoiding questions i was asking him, my main concern was to get my partner here to look after my daughter, unfortunatly the witness didnt have a phone and the driver refused to lend me his so i was stuck, my i phone had fallen onto the floor during the accident and shattered so i couldnt see the screen to make a call.

the witnes told me his address which i knew was just down the road and he said he would go phone the police and also my partner and he left, at this point the other driver started to try and get into his car, saying he wasnt giving me his insurance details as it was my fault, and he had to make a food delivery and would be back, i knew he was lieing and trying to make off so i surgested we drive down to the witnesses house and wait there for the police, he agreed, (i knew deep down this was a bad idea) as soon as he got in his car he was off like a rocket and i lost him.

When i got home my partner phoned the police and reported it giving them the registration number from what i could remember, i knew i had seen the car around as it was local so i went out in search, i failed to find it.

The police wasnt interested and said it was untraceable so could do nothing about it, after speaking with my insurance and also with the damage and the value of the car it was going to become a write off and they made out it would affect me, so i didnt go ahead with them and decided to repair the car myself, this was going to be costly there was more than i thought, including underneath dameage, so in the end the vehicle was sold as scrap to a private buyer and i lost £2500

I then borrowed a car and when out driving i saw the car that had been involved in the accident and blocked him in and called the police, they wasnt interested and wouldnt come out, so i said i wasnt letting him go until
A) i got his insurance details
took pictures of him and his car with damage
I did the above and also took them to the police station and at that point they took notice and said they would investigate.
I contacted his insurance company and they agreed yes he was insured etc etc and they would deal with it.
A few days later i got a letter from the police stating the car or driver wasnt insured but it wasnt in the public interest to prosicute him ?????? WHY they wouldnt say.

Eventually his insurance confirmed he wasnt insured and at this point i instructed a claim company.
Here we are in 2013 and we are now battling with the MIB, the guy was traced by the MIB and owned 3 take away shops but has now vanished and sold them so they now say they wont pay out anything.

We are at the stage of issuing a court order or something against the MIB and thats all i know, they seem to be defending the uninsured driver like crazy, why would they do this.

Has anyone had a similar experience and what was the end result ??
Thanks in advance

Jack_Regan

Yeah I had a mib claim and they paid out no problem.

Maybe they think you went and found a similar car with damage

What was the delay between the collision and finding the car?

spacey2012

They are defending their own interests first.
I take it you checked with MID that the car did not have insurance held upon it at the time.
The driver is different, it is complicated but a driver can be uninsured but the car is insured for third party risks.
Finding out if the vehicle had insurance held on it is your first job, forget the driver.

InsideInsurance

The MIB's job is to act like an insurer for the untraced/ uninsured driver. Just because the MIB is dealing with it doesnt mean they roll over and pay every claim. Not every uninsured driver is responsible for every accident they've been in.

Ultimately the MIB pays out of a fund created by all UK insurers who pay into that fund from your premiums. Currently it costs the average motorist (inc you) $33 a year on your policy premium. Would you really want that to become $100 a year because they become more lax in defending claims?

The first thing the MIB do for a claim under the uninsured driver agreement is check that there are no possible insurances in place that may cover the incident. On the basis they continued to deal with it would suggest that there wasnt but that doesnt stop you or your representatives triple checking.

Strider590

Confused about the road layout.......

I assume it's something like this?
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=sutton+coldfield&hl=en&ll=52.562402,-1.819718&spn=0.003639,0.007907&num=20&safe=off&hnear=Sutton+Coldfield,+West+Midlands,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=52.562485,-1.82188&panoid=I7bvhdloBnmilNBBkiAa4A&cbp=12,132.54,,0,14.17

Opposite way around though, but it's a really nasty bit of road because drivers sit in the RH lane then get carved up when they don't turn off into the carpark.

At any rate, I suspect this person is someone who's hard to trace, probably goes by many names and isn't worth the work to actually prosecute.

BertTheRaccoon

The bottom line is the driver is untraced - i.e no name for him exchanged at the time or soon afterwards.

Which means even if the car was insured, the insurers of it are not forced to act as RTA insurer.,

So it appears to be a MIB Untraced claim, which excludes claims for property damage unless "significant injury" arose

having said that - the case of Barnard -v- Scully (1931)- the headnote reads "where a plaintiff in an action for negligence proves that the damage has been caused by the Defendant's motor car, the fact of ownership of the motor car is prima facie evidence that the motor car, at the material time, was being driven by the owner, or by his servant or agent"

I have a case with some similarity which is due at a court hearing in the next 3 weeks. it involves my clients, who are the owners of a van, being driven by their employee, who was rear-ended by another car on the approach to a roundabout as the traffic lights changed.

The driver of the offending vehicle acted in a very threatening manner at the scene and even in his rage kicked the front of his own car lol. My client's driver decided it was not worth getting clipped at the scene over a minor fender bender and merely took down the reg number and drove off. later reporting it to the police - who like in your case did sod all about it.

The owner/ registered keeper of the car is a woman with an African surname, who claims it was not her car etc. The driver and passengers in the car are both described as being of African descent.

So we can't prove who was driving, but there are some inferences that can be drawn that somebody, who was not named on the insurance policy was driving the car with the permission of the owner and that is why she now tries to argue "it wasn't my car 'guv". We'll see how I get on.

vaio

BertTheRaccoon wrote: »

........So it appears to be a MIB Untraced claim, which excludes claims for property damage unless "significant injury" arose.......

Got a link to the "significant injury" bit as I thought MIB untraced driver paid out for damage only claims subject to a £300 excess.

BertTheRaccoon

http://mib.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/DD1C220B-F488-414F-B8B5-39ADC8D8077A/0/2nd_Supplementary_Agreement_for_the_Untraced_DriversAgreement.pdf

InsideInsurance

In 2011 the significant injury element was added:
http://www.mib.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/DD1C220B-F488-414F-B8B5-39ADC8D8077A/0/2nd_Supplementary_Agreement_for_the_Untraced_DriversAgreement.pdf

vaio

Reading that is seems (to my flu addled brain) that the requirement for significant injury only arises if you are making a claim for property damage where the offending driver AND the offending vehicle are unidentified.
which must be a pretty small sub-set of claims under the untraced driver agreement