License to be Revoked. Advice sought please

Mercdriver

doris540 said:

surely she can read how many miles shes doing

Yes, but perhaps she didn't think of resetting the trip odometer.  That would have been the simplest way.

AdrianC

Mercdriver said:

doris540 said:

surely she can read how many miles shes doing

Yes, but perhaps she didn't think of resetting the trip odometer.  That would have been the simplest way.

Not at all - and, assuming it's only a 999.9-then-roll tripmeter, not even very useful.

All it takes is remembering two numbers.
1. The start mileage
2. The annual limit

You don't even need to do that - just add the two together and remember that.

Of course, we don't even know if the daughter was aware of the existence of a mileage limit on the policy, since she abrogated all responsibility for insuring her car.

TooManyPoints

...since she abrogated all responsibility for insuring her car.

I think that there's the rub. The OP's daughter seems to have had no involvement in insuring her car whatsoever. A court may well feel that whether there are any conditions and what they are would be unknown to her. How her father was notified of the cancellation is therefore a somewhat moot point. She was driving around uninsured for three months totally oblivious to the problems. She would be hard pressed to get a court to find "Special Reasons" even if it had been her own "Junk" folder the cancellation notice arrived in. Passing responsibility for her insurance to a third party will simply make it harder to convince a court that they should exercise discretion.

As far as challenging the method of notification goes, I would be very surprised if the insurers have not got that well covered in their Ts&Cs. If it is to go to the Ombudsman for a ruling that will take some time and a court is unlikely to be minded to adjourn the matter until such time unless the daughter can provide some evidence that they acted improperly. Nothing has changed my mind from my original conclusion. I suppose she should look on the bright side and be thankful that her lack of cover was identified by the police. She could have found out after being involved in an accident where large sums in damage and/or personal injury were likely to be claimed.

AdrianC

TooManyPoints said:

...since she abrogated all responsibility for insuring her car.

I think that there's the rub. The OP's daughter seems to have had no involvement in insuring her car whatsoever. A court may well feel that whether there are any conditions and what they are would be unknown to her. How her father was notified of the cancellation is therefore a somewhat moot point. She was driving around uninsured for three months totally oblivious to the problems. She would be hard pressed to get a court to find "Special Reasons" even if it had been her own "Junk" folder the cancellation notice arrived in. Passing responsibility for her insurance to a third party will simply make it harder to convince a court that they should exercise discretion.

And, of course, at the end of the day it is ALWAYS the driver's 100% responsibility to ensure that they are insured.

There is only one very tightly defined exceptions to that, and it doesn't cover this.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/143

(3)A person charged with using a motor vehicle in contravention of this section shall not be convicted if he proves—

(a)that the vehicle did not belong to him and was not in his possession under a contract of hiring or of loan,

(b)that he was using the vehicle in the course of his employment, and

(c)that he neither knew nor had reason to believe that there was not in force in relation to the vehicle such a policy of insurance ... as is mentioned in subsection (1) above.

There's also a possible risk of the father being at risk of a causing-and-permitting conviction.

[Deleted User]

This is an area of law that needs to be looked at. It keeps happening to people, they think they are insured but the insurer cancelled and didn't inform them. Sometimes the insurer writes to them and it takes a few days to arrive in the post, during which time they get stopped by the police.

These people clearly did not mean to drive uninsured and would doubtless have re-arranged insurance had they known. Some burden should be placed on the insurer.

AdrianC

[DELETED USER] said:

This is an area of law that needs to be looked at. It keeps happening to people, they think they are insured but the insurer cancelled and didn't inform them. Sometimes the insurer writes to them and it takes a few days to arrive in the post, during which time they get stopped by the police.

These people clearly did not mean to drive uninsured and would doubtless have re-arranged insurance had they known. Some burden should be placed on the insurer.

Let's just address your factual errors there, shall we?

Some burden is placed on the insurer. There is no indication the insurer breached that burden.

The insurer DID notify them about the substantial breach of their policy. The notifications were received. The recipient (who wasn't the driver) didn't read them.

This isn't a matter of "a few days" - the policy was cancelled three months before the police stopped them for driving without insurance.

 Still, just as well they were stopped and didn't find out after a collision, eh?

But, apart from that, what did the Romans ever do for us?

TooManyPoints

There's also a possible risk of the father being at risk of a causing-and-permitting conviction.

Only if he was "the person keeping the vehicle" or had some sort of control over who used it (which he may have been, who knows from the information we have?).

I find it interesting that notification of cancellation by e-Mail is, in these circumstances, somehow seen to be less appropriate than "snail mail." Apart from the time factor (with e-mail being near enough instantaneous) I imagine far more snail mail goes adrift than does e-mail. Of course they both suffer the same drawback in that - as in this case - the recipient may not read the contents. But I suppose you can't have everything. Perhaps the insurers should send an equerry round to bring the tidings personally to each of their policyholders before they can cancel the policy.  

AdrianC

TooManyPoints said:
Perhaps the insurers should send an equerry round to bring the tidings personally to each of their policyholders before they can cancel the policy.  

Of course, if the post room decide to sort the post, and only bring the stuff they think important, then that's exactly the same situation as the over-eager spam folder that started this...

Can't quite see their highnesses dealing personally with all the generic junkmail, can you?
"Oooh, Spar's got cases of lager and frozen pizzas cheap next week."

Bonniepurple

AdrianC said:

photome said:

It may pay the Op to check their own t and c

We don't know who the policyholder is. We know for sure it's not the OP.
It's either the daughter, the driver of the car, or the father/ex-husband, who set the policy up and failed to read the emails they acknowledge were received.

Anybody else wondering if the daughter's just a named driver, so fronting added to the mix?

I’ve been wondering about fronting, given that the daughter’s needs aren’t really being considered.  EITHER the daughter deliberately under declared her mileage to get a cheaper rate (and it must have been significantly under to be so over within a few months, even without a job!) OR her Dad was down as main driver and therefore she had reduced mileage for her cover - which would tie in with emails being sent to him.

Certainly she doesn’t come out of this well.  Hopefully she will learn the lesson which is to check, check and check again and take responsibility for herself - and to update the insurance if anything changes.

Mercdriver

AdrianC said:

Mercdriver said:

doris540 said:

surely she can read how many miles shes doing

Yes, but perhaps she didn't think of resetting the trip odometer.  That would have been the simplest way.

Not at all - and, assuming it's only a 999.9-then-roll tripmeter, not even very useful.

All it takes is remembering two numbers.
1. The start mileage
2. The annual limit

You don't even need to do that - just add the two together and remember that.

Of course, we don't even know if the daughter was aware of the existence of a mileage limit on the policy, since she abrogated all responsibility for insuring her car.

Many cars, mine included have trip computers that go up to 9999.9 miles.  I use it to time my service which is scheduled for 12,500.  I'm yet to get to 9999.9 before a service is done, but suspect it will this time as I am only 50 miles away from that.