Car insurance - How can a NO fault incident increase my premium?

MarkPetersMG

In Summary: Our car gets hit by a drunk driver, he's convisted, our insurer pays out nothing and it's adding £30+ to both our car policies! How can that be right? If so it has just become a very expensive wing mirror whilst doing our civic duty.
  Yesterday I tried to deal with my wife's car insurance due 27th Aug having done some searches the night before as you suggest. I opted for Admiral, the link from Confused.com didn't work so eventually I got through on the phone and spoke to Gareth.
Based on the info from the quote I'd received from Confused.com it was £260 but if we added a 2nd car [due Oct] it would be £220. The 2nd car quote was £196.
 Car registered in Wife's name: Main driver: me, other drivers: Wife and son
 Car registered in my name: Main Driver: Wife, 2nd driver: me

Then Gareth raised a query, there was another incident in Oct 19 for Lynn and I advised:
 1. I was the driver
 2. The driver's wing mirror was hit by a drunk driver when his car crossed over the white line
 3. We turned round followed the driver for close to 1 hr whilst reporting the incident and how the car was weaving all over the road to the police
 4. A police car joined us after 30mins and despite sirens and blue lights he continued
 5. Eventually he stopped when he failed to negotiate the entrance into a second field! Yes we'd gone off road. A 2nd police car had laid a stinger out but he had turned into field 1 to avoid it
 6. He blew over 2x the limit and was later found guilty for:
    a. Not stopping at the incident
    b. Driving whilst over the limit, whiskey bottle was in the car
    c. Failing to stop for the police
 7. He was banned from driving and fined
  We did our civic duty in getting this driver off the road and without further injuries having only left our home to see our chiropractor who lives 1 mile from our home, a 10minute outing and got home 2+ hours later
  And our reward, Gareth added the incident even clearly no fault and nothing paid out from our insurer [Churchill] and both car premiums went up by £30+
  So the insurers recover £60 from us this year and no doubt the next 5yrs it has to reported so call that £300. In hindsight I should have let the driver go on his merry [very] way and possible hit whoever, dealt with the wing mirror myself for less than £300 and saved ourselves 2+ hours that night and circa 5hrs subsequently giving statements, providing dashcam footage and dealing with Churchill whose performance BTW was poor.
  I didn't take out the policy with Admiral, still to sort it
  Is this really how it works? They understandable penalise the driver at fault, nationally weight our renewal premiums and then load the innocent parties too. How many times can they pluck the same apple?

Sandtree

Mass market products like car insurance works on basic statistics.... with all other things being equal their experience tells them that someone like you with no claims makes an average claims experience of £500, someone who is identical but for the fact they have had one non-fault claim has an average claims experience of £523. That means an additional £23 risk premium needs to be charged plus Insurance Premium Tax, plus risk margin, plus profit margin. 

Different insurers have different experiences and so premiums are different.

If you want to rationalise it... maybe some of the others with a single non-fault claim frequently park in a terrible carpark where prangs are frequent... last time the person did the right thing and left a note but the next time the person drives off so its a fault claim... maybe they are prone to excessive acceleration and braking and got rear ended but their behaviour is likely to lead to other accidents... or maybe they often are near a village pub at kicking out time where drinking a couple and driving isnt that uncommon and next time its an unattended vehicle who'd wing mirror is hit.

A) Shop around and you'll find not everyone has such a high view on non-fault claims
If you claimed for the damage to your car then talk to them about claiming premium increases as an uninsured loss... success rates aren't great for this but have heard of people getting payouts.

Aretnap

Sandtree said:

If you want to rationalise it... maybe some of the others with a single non-fault claim frequently park in a terrible carpark where prangs are frequent... last time the person did the right thing and left a note but the next time the person drives off so its a fault claim... maybe they are prone to excessive acceleration and braking and got rear ended but their behaviour is likely to lead to other accidents... or maybe they often are near a village pub at kicking out time where drinking a couple and driving isnt that uncommon and next time its an unattended vehicle who'd wing mirror is hit.

Also, people assume that "no fault" means "blameless" or even "saintly". It doesn't. It just means that the other driver was found liable - nothing more, nothing less.

Example: Many years ago when I was young and foolish, I slightly knobbishly overtook a line of traffic that was queuing to turn left, pulled into a gap in the queue at speed, slammed my brakes on... and the guy behind me didn't brake as hard as I did. His insurers admitted liability, and I was hardly going to argue with that, so it went down as a no fault accident on my part. But in fact it was at least partly my fault for driving like an impatient !!!!!!, and I didn't really have any complaint about the fact that it put my premium up slightly for the next few years.

Or imagine two drivers approaching a junction when a foolish driver pulls out of a side street without looking. Driver A brakes too late and hits the emerging car, and has a "no fault" accident as the guy who pulled out will be found liable. Driver B was paying more attention to the road ahead, slowed down on the approach to a junction, brakes just in time and doesn't have an accident at all. Who would you rather insure - Driver A or Driver B?

Of course your accident may be different, but the algorithm isn't sophisticated enough to apply a different loading based on the thousands of different types of accident you could have had. It just sees that you've ticked the box that says "accident - no fault" and lumps you in with people like me, and our hypothetical Driver A.

If you don't think that's fair and don't want a dumb algorithm setting your insurance price then the alternative would be to go to Lloyds of London, sit down for tea and biscuits with your underwriter, chat to him in detail about the circumstances of your accident and see if he thinks that it marks you down as a higher risk. However you would inevitably pay extra for that sort of personalised service - probably a lot more than the £30 that Churchill's computer wants to charge you. So in practice nobody actually does it.

`

Sandtree

You forgot to mention that you’ll be on a low stool and the underwriter and his assistant on a high bench/chair... got to love the underwriting room

Ditzy_Mitzy

I am sorry, but one who engages in an hour long car chase with a driver he suspects is drunk, without the benefit of training, lights and sirens, a control room and a helicopter purely, it appears, because he is upset about a broken wing mirror, is not a low-risk sort of driver.  He has, in fact, demonstrated that he is quite willing to put himself and others in danger following a rather minor provocation and lacks the ability to carry out a proportional risk assessment of a particular situation.  All right the driver was caught, justice was done, but what if it had all gone wrong?  
Someone hit my wing mirror years ago.  I stopped when safe, effected a repair with masking tape and later had it fixed properly by a garage.  It's not worth getting oneself involved in such silliness; police drivers are assessed regularly and equipped with suitable cars for good reason.

jimbo6977

If you live and/or drive in areas rife with poor drivers who are going to ding your car, you are more likely to cost your insurer some cash, either in admin or in disputing liability or in paying out on split-liability claims. It's normal. 

Edited to add "drive" in 1st sentence.

[Deleted User]

You basically need to claim the increased premium from the drunk driver.

dunstonh

In Summary: Our car gets hit by a drunk driver, he's convisted, our insurer pays out nothing and it's adding £30+ to both our car policies! How can that be right?

Very easily right.

Insurance is priced on statistics.  People who suffer a claimable event are more likely to suffer another in the short term.   

Some people in that pot may suffer multiple claims. Others may suffer no further claims.  However, its the collective average that matters and that is the pot you are in.

Also people who claim may not be at fault but they may not have done the best in avoiding a potential issue.   You can put yourself in harms way and from what you describe, you appear to have done that.  

Barny1979

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

I am sorry, but one who engages in an hour long car chase with a driver he suspects is drunk, without the benefit of training, lights and sirens, a control room and a helicopter purely, it appears, because he is upset about a broken wing mirror, is not a low-risk sort of driver.  He has, in fact, demonstrated that he is quite willing to put himself and others in danger following a rather minor provocation and lacks the ability to carry out a proportional risk assessment of a particular situation.  All right the driver was caught, justice was done, but what if it had all gone wrong?  
Someone hit my wing mirror years ago.  I stopped when safe, effected a repair with masking tape and later had it fixed properly by a garage.  It's not worth getting oneself involved in such silliness; police drivers are assessed regularly and equipped with suitable cars for good reason.

Exactly this, they say they went off-road to pursue the driver, as well as the Police it appears, I bet the Police weren't too impressed with a member of the public being involved.