Getting MOT early

Quentin

INT1 wrote: »

The car fails an MOT and therefore not road worthy.

Just an excuse not to pay out

No. Having or not having an MOT is irrelevant to the insurance situation. The only relevance is if a car is written off and has no MOT. (As that may affect its market value).

If a car is not roadworthy, then the insurance is only affected if the unroadworthy element is relevant to the claim.

shaun_from_Africa

INT1 wrote: »

The car fails an MOT and therefore not road worthy.

Just an excuse not to pay out

My car can fail an MOT and I can still legally drive it home from the testing station provided that the failure wasn't something that made the vehicle unroadworthy or unsafe.

If simply failing an MOT invalidated insurance, you would never be allowed to drive to or from a MOT station without a valid certificate.

Aretnap

INT1 wrote: »

The car fails an MOT and therefore not road worthy.

Just an excuse not to pay out

First of all, how does the fact that the car failed an MOT at some point in the past prove the car wasn't roadworthy at the time of the claim? Perhaps you got the fault fixed and didn't bother to do a retest (after all, you're still covered by the old certificate until its expiry date). Of perhaps there was no actual fault in the first place - MOT testers aren't infallible, and apparently there are even dodgy ones who fail cars on dubious points just to draw in extra business from gullible customers.

Secondly, as above even if the car wasn't roadworthy, the insurer can only refuse to pay a claim if the condition of the car actually caused, or at least contributed to the accident. So, for example, if you had no working headlights they could refuse to pay a claim for an accident you caused by driving into something in the dark, but not for an accident which happened in daylight. If you car failed on something like emissions, it's hard to see how that could ever be grounds for refusing a claim.