Should I keep my insurance/registration papers in my car or in my pocket?

Aretnap

londonTiger wrote: »

Police will never ask you for your insurance documents...

They'll ask for insurance certificate if they're thinking about seizing your car because it's not showing up on the MID for whatever reason. They have no authority to seize your car, whatever the MID says, unless they ask for your certificate and you fail to present it.

Jamie_Carter

ioscorpio wrote: »

RTA Road Traffic Accident
RTC Road Traffic Collision

I used to work in the claims industry and RTA was the terminology used.

And that's the terminology that I was using. But it appears that they were using RTA as an abbreviation of Road Traffic Act.

Jamie_Carter

Aretnap wrote: »

They'll ask for insurance certificate if they're thinking about seizing your car because it's not showing up on the MID for whatever reason. They have no authority to seize your car, whatever the MID says, unless they ask for your certificate and you fail to present it.

But they also won't accept an insurance certificate as proof of insurance, they will check with your insurance company. This is because it has become quite common for people to take out insurance, and then cancel it once they have received the certificate.

londonTiger

Aretnap wrote: »

They'll ask for insurance certificate if they're thinking about seizing your car because it's not showing up on the MID for whatever reason. They have no authority to seize your car, whatever the MID says, unless they ask for your certificate and you fail to present it.

just check your status on askmid then?

The only hiccup you'll get is if you change insurers or missed your payment on your monthly insurance.

I'm pretty sure askmid gets updated within a few hours anyway so extremely rare to get caught out inbetween changing insurers.

If you get stopped by ANPR, Police will have the expiry date and time of your previous insurer so if you explain you just switched it should be fine.

Aretnap

Jamie_Carter wrote: »

But they also won't accept an insurance certificate as proof of insurance, they will check with your insurance company. This is because it has become quite common for people to take out insurance, and then cancel it once they have received the certificate.

That's true. However if they get it wrong and seize the car after you've presented a valid certificate (perhaps your car isn't showing on the MID, it's two in the morning and nobody at the insurance company is answering the phone... or perhaps the person on the phone is just an idiot, as in the Pryor case) then they'll be acting unlawfully and you'll be entitled to full compensation for storage fees, loss of use of the car, incidental expenses etc.

If you don't show your certificate and they reasonably believe that you're not insured then they can legally seize the car, and even if it turns out that you are insured you have few rights - all you can do is ask nicely for your release fee back and hope they'll be reasonable.

It's not an amazingly common scenario so it's quite a small advantage to keeping the certificate in the car - but it is a tangible advantage nonetheless.

dacouch

londonTiger wrote: »

Police would much prefer to use the MID database than to ask for paperwork. By all means keep a paper copy if you have an unusual insurance situation like if you are insured as a person to drive any passenger vehicle, like someone who moves car hire fleet vehicles around.

Or if you're travelling to Europe and have EU cover and the countries you are visiting do not have access to the UK MID.

Otherwise it's a complete waste of time and a security liablity (more so the logbook rather than the insurance certificate - although having any paperwork with your address on is a liability).

Police will never ask you for your insurance documents or your v5 documents so why bother with it?

If your car is towed away by police and they will only release the car if you provide proof of insurance and ownership it might bebetter to have that at home so you can retrieve it than to tell the jobsworth at the impound that the documents are in the car - which he would respond "sorry so I am not authorised to remove items from the car" -

As aretnap has mentioned the pryor case is a very good reason to keep your certificate on you or in the car.

The Certificate does not show your address

Jamie_Carter

Aretnap wrote: »

That's true. However if they get it wrong and seize the car after you've presented a valid certificate (perhaps your car isn't showing on the MID, it's two in the morning and nobody at the insurance company is answering the phone... or perhaps the person on the phone is just an idiot, as in the Pryor case) then they'll be acting unlawfully and you'll be entitled to full compensation for storage fees, loss of use of the car, incidental expenses etc.

If you don't show your certificate and they reasonably believe that you're not insured then they can legally seize the car, and even if it turns out that you are insured you have few rights - all you can do is ask nicely for your release fee back and hope they'll be reasonable.

It's not an amazingly common scenario so it's quite a small advantage to keeping the certificate in the car - but it is a tangible advantage nonetheless.

I may be wrong, but don't most car insurance companies have 24 hour claims lines, so it would be possible for the police to check if a driver had insurance??

dacouch

Jamie_Carter wrote: »

I may be wrong, but don't most car insurance companies have 24 hour claims lines, so it would be possible for the police to check if a driver had insurance??

No........

Jamie_Carter

dacouch wrote: »

No........

The companies that I've used do.

dacouch

Jamie_Carter wrote: »

The companies that I've used do.

Insurers have different systems for their claims services this ranges from in house UK based staff to in house foreign based staff to contracted out to a third party claims management company to a third party company that simply takes messages.

It would be a fairly small percentage of Insurers whose claims staff would be able to field calls from police officers 24 hours and also have access to the neccessary records to confirm cover