License to be Revoked. Advice sought please

452

Mercdriver said:

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.  

Fair point but I don't know many who have put their teenagers into a new vehicle. I may be wrong and it's been like that for a while but I always zero my trip when I fill up. 

Don't ask me why and way makes more sense but I've always done it. 

Jules2310

Jules2310 said:

My daughter passed her test last July and has been driving since and her dad (we're separated) paid for her insurance which was conditional based on mileage.  It transpired that her insurance was revoked in February 2020 as she'd exceeded the mileage she'd been insured to drive for.  All notification emails were sent to her dad but he says they went to his junkmail folder which he never checks.  We only found out she had been driving without insurance in May when she got stopped by police. We now have received a letter advising us to either pay £300 and she gets 6 points (which revokes her license) or apply to appeal.  We are thinking of writing to the police to ask that this is waived on the basis that we didn't know her insurance had been revoked.  Has anyone ever had to go through this?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  She's a good driver, has a blackbox in her car and never exceeds any speed limits.  She also has a job now and needs her car for work.  
Thank you for reading this so far, and I look forward to any advice.

By way of update, we were successful!  This was back in January but I never got round to updating.  I hope this gives hope to someone.  We did quite a bit of work with the appeal.  

Aretnap

Jules2310 said:

Jules2310 said:

My daughter passed her test last July and has been driving since and her dad (we're separated) paid for her insurance which was conditional based on mileage.  It transpired that her insurance was revoked in February 2020 as she'd exceeded the mileage she'd been insured to drive for.  All notification emails were sent to her dad but he says they went to his junkmail folder which he never checks.  We only found out she had been driving without insurance in May when she got stopped by police. We now have received a letter advising us to either pay £300 and she gets 6 points (which revokes her license) or apply to appeal.  We are thinking of writing to the police to ask that this is waived on the basis that we didn't know her insurance had been revoked.  Has anyone ever had to go through this?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  She's a good driver, has a blackbox in her car and never exceeds any speed limits.  She also has a job now and needs her car for work.  
Thank you for reading this so far, and I look forward to any advice.

By way of update, we were successful!  This was back in January but I never got round to updating.  I hope this gives hope to someone.  We did quite a bit of work with the appeal.  

Good news and thanks for getting back!

To assist anyone who may be in a similar situation, what do you mean by successful? Do you mean that she got the cancellation reversed, or that the court accepted a special reasons plea? 

daivid

452 said:

Mercdriver said:

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.  

Fair point but I don't know many who have put their teenagers into a new vehicle. I may be wrong and it's been like that for a while but I always zero my trip when I fill up. 

Don't ask me why and way makes more sense but I've always done it. 

I don't think it needs to be a new vehicle these days though the cars spec linked to target ownership probably plays a big part (i.e. people who rack up motorway miles vs those who tootle round town). My somewhat old (07) Civic runs two odometers at once; Odo A which resets on re fuelling and has never gone far past 400 miles and odo B which I manually reset and definitely goes into the thousands. On my car it is easy to toggle between the two, though to keep track of milage in a given year I use the milage at MOT which in my case is close enough to the insurance renewal date.

Arklight

Aretnap said:

Jules2310 said:

Jules2310 said:

My daughter passed her test last July and has been driving since and her dad (we're separated) paid for her insurance which was conditional based on mileage.  It transpired that her insurance was revoked in February 2020 as she'd exceeded the mileage she'd been insured to drive for.  All notification emails were sent to her dad but he says they went to his junkmail folder which he never checks.  We only found out she had been driving without insurance in May when she got stopped by police. We now have received a letter advising us to either pay £300 and she gets 6 points (which revokes her license) or apply to appeal.  We are thinking of writing to the police to ask that this is waived on the basis that we didn't know her insurance had been revoked.  Has anyone ever had to go through this?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  She's a good driver, has a blackbox in her car and never exceeds any speed limits.  She also has a job now and needs her car for work.  
Thank you for reading this so far, and I look forward to any advice.

By way of update, we were successful!  This was back in January but I never got round to updating.  I hope this gives hope to someone.  We did quite a bit of work with the appeal.  

Good news and thanks for getting back!

To assist anyone who may be in a similar situation, what do you mean by successful? Do you mean that she got the cancellation reversed, or that the court accepted a special reasons plea? 

Great news, and one in the eye for all the pork-pie hats on here with their prophesies of doom.

TooManyPoints

Great news, and one in the eye for all the pork-pie hats on here with their prophesies of doom.

Indeed. As one of the prophets of doom, though, I would be interested to learn whether the success was due to the insurers confirming that cover was in place, or if the court decided, for some reason, not to impose six points (either because the defendant entered a not guilty plea and was acquitted, or because the court found there were "Special Reasons" not to endorse her licence). My prophesies of doom were based on the assumption that cover was not in place and if the court did decide to impose no penalty even if that was so, I would be very surprised.

Dr_Crypto

Fair enough I was wrong. What was the basis of the appeal? That she was insured or some kind of special reasons? 

Arklight

As a parent myself, this is the kind of thing that I worry about for my kids. Online offers have made many things that used to be simple, incomprehensibly confusing. The web forms are designed to funnel you through to a purchase page by making a range of assumptions for you that are opt out, not opt in, buried in confusing small print. Understandably, parents try and help their kids with this stuff but are often just as confused.

The reality is, black box policies are suitable for almost no one. They give the insurers the right to cancel policies based on anything they choose from braking too sharply, to the vehicle being used without the policyholder's knowledge, and the young person then has the millstone of cancelled insurance around their necks forever.

If you are going to cancel someone's insurance, send a letter to their house, and give them a ring and a voicemail explaining why. 

AdrianC

Arklight said:

As a parent myself, this is the kind of thing that I worry about for my kids. Online offers have made many things that used to be simple, incomprehensibly confusing. The web forms are designed to funnel you through to a purchase page by making a range of assumptions for you that are opt out, not opt in, buried in confusing small print. Understandably, parents try and help their kids with this stuff but are often just as confused.

The reality is, black box policies are suitable for almost no one. They give the insurers the right to cancel policies based on anything they choose from braking too sharply, to the vehicle being used without the policyholder's knowledge, and the young person then has the millstone of cancelled insurance around their necks forever.

This is nothing to do with the black box.

The OP's offspring was insured to cover a certain mileage. They exceeded the mileage they were insured for.

Yes, the black box probably made the insurer aware... but if there was no black box, just a claim, they would have found the policy cancelled anyway. Which is the better situation?

If you are going to cancel someone's insurance, send a letter to their house, and give them a ring and a voicemail explaining why.

When somebody takes out a policy online and selects email for correspondence, they have a responsibility to make sure that email address works and is checked.

The root cause of the problem here is parents trying to manage the lives of adult children.
Why can't the main driver be policyholder and have the communication sent to them? They know the mileage they cover.

I don't quite see how revocation can have been avoided, unless the insurer stepped forward to say they would have covered anyway. I suspect the OP will never give us any more detail.

IN10 is a minimum of six points.
Courts do not order - or prevent - revocations. They are automatic on DVLA's part when somebody gets 6+pts within 2yrs of their first test pass.

https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-court/item/no-insurance-revised-2017/
https://www.gov.uk/penalty-points-endorsements/endorsement-codes-and-penalty-points

Dr_Crypto

I’d like to know too. 

I said I couldn’t see a court going for special reasons on account of email spam folders unless, I suppose, the people involved were very convincing. Maybe the insurer accepted they would have been insured?