New driver, car crash, insurance.

arcon5

sheramber wrote: »

My husband wrote our car off three years ago. A very slow motion glide across a road covered in frozen snow, over the verge and then tipped up upside down into a deep ditch. Only the wheels were visible above the ditch.

Fortunately, we were able to climb out of the window and scramble up the side of the ditch.

The car was not so fortunate.

Our insurance company paid out the value of our car and said that if we bought another car within a month the insurance would continue until the end of the policy year at no extra cost.

When the renewal came in, from the same company, the premium was less than we had paid the year before.

We did have a protected no claim bonus so that was not affected.

Sadly the person involved is a new young driver so im almost certain it won't end in the same way as your premium here

babyemily

Thank you for all your advice. It's very much appreciated. She was third party fire & theft. No way could she afford fully comp
Her insurers are being really difficult. They are demanding to know exactly what injuries there are to all people, their ages, all damage to cars in detail. Both cars are write offs as they were both cut out. Every time they read her statement back to her it was different to what she said. It's now correct. The other driver has said she was not speeding and we have took screen shots of her black box scores which show 10+ on every one and also no speeding
She has given them all the details the Police gave her but she has no more. The insurance even wanted to know where they were all going. Times they were cut free. Answers she couldn't give. It's very worrying and scary
She is on very very strong pain killers and she is in trouble for not reporting it within 24 hours. She wasn't able to she has terrible concussion and I had to have a dr for her yesterday morning. I'm not sure what to do there if anyone can give any advice I would be very grateful
We are going to help her get a new car. She needs to be driving so that she can do her advanced test, can't remember what it's called, she needs this to hopefully get a place in uni this year to do paramedics.
She walked away from a head on collision, everyone did. It was 10 minutes away from home. Even the police were amazed at this. I know she's a young driver but she's a good girl and I know she will learn a lot of lessons from this.
Once again, thank you all. It's really helped seeing all the comments giving us help and advice.

GwylimT

The questions from insurance are fairly standard, some policies do require informing within twenty four hours, remember the insurance company is just protecting their asset. When she buys insurance again she can look at how various companies are rated for service during claims etc.

arcon5

They know it was a serious accident and gonna be expensive for them - so they want as much info as possible and hopefully something will be in there that can give them a reason to reduce a payout. It's not personal, it's business as far as they are concerned... just a typical day in the office for them.

rudekid48

Which insurer is it?

babyemily

rudekid48 wrote: »

Which insurer is it?

Will go check. It's an online one I know that!!

Aretnap

She won't necessarily have to declare it for the full 5 years - it varies from insurer to insurer. Some insurers (Direct Line and Admiral spring to mind) only ask about accidents in the last three years.

In the meantime it's unlikely to stop her getting insurance entirely, but she may well find that in the short term her premiums increase and/or there are fewer insurers who will quote for her. In 3-5 years time it will make no difference at all, other than in that she'll have slightly less no claims bonus (as obviously she won't be earning any this year).

If her car is scrapped (I suppose it's not technically written off as neither insurer will be paying for it) she will not generally get any refund on the 6 months (or whatever) that her policy still has to run, but if she gets a new car quickly the insurer should give her the option of transferring the balance of the policy to the new car (see here). This does depend on the new car being a make/model that the insurer would normally be willing to cover her to drive, so before choosing a new car for her it's worth checking with the insurer that they'll cover her on it, and what (if any) additional premium they'll charge.

Stoke

Honesty is the best policy. After I had my accident, I really believed that my premiums would spiral out of control due to me being so young. Some companies would only insure me for thousands of pounds, a few of the Admiral companies were fairly competitive, but ultimately, I ended up staying with Direct Line. I found they handled my situation very well, and in the end, my renewal quote was exactly the same as the year before. I basically just didn't have any NCD to bring down the price a bit.

I've since direct line and despite having a second accident on my file, my insurance is down to £300 a year.

Don't panic.