Help! Car accident, at fault, realised MOT expired

MinuteNoodles

aw16 said:

So worst case scenario they find my car unroadworthy (I don’t think it was) and they don’t pay anything for my car and they pay for the lorry and any injury initially but they then may come looking for the money from me? 

Basically yes, they may come after you for the payout. No police, no fine or points. I'd be surprised if there's any injury claims, I doubt they even felt you hit them.

aw16

MinuteNoodles said:

aw16 said:

So worst case scenario they find my car unroadworthy (I don’t think it was) and they don’t pay anything for my car and they pay for the lorry and any injury initially but they then may come looking for the money from me? 

Basically yes, they may come after you for the payout. No police, no fine or points. I'd be surprised if there's any injury claims, I doubt they even felt you hit them.

MinuteNoodles said:

aw16 said:

So worst case scenario they find my car unroadworthy (I don’t think it was) and they don’t pay anything for my car and they pay for the lorry and any injury initially but they then may come looking for the money from me? 

Basically yes, they may come after you for the payout. No police, no fine or points. I'd be surprised if there's any injury claims, I doubt they even felt you hit them.

I mean I don’t think he’d put an injury claim in but people do all the time don’t they even when they aren’t injured. He drove off and carried on with his working day though. So worst case I’m paying for everything....that could be costly....what if I don’t have the money?? 

chrisw

I think there's a lot of scaremongering going on here.

It appears the collision was caused by you not realising the lorry was slowing for whatever reason rather than a mechanical failure. You have admitted fault, I doubt anyone will look into the cause any further. If the car's repairable, they will pay for it to be repaired, the MOT won't come in to it. If the car's a write off, the lack of MOT may be noted by the assessor and may or may not affect the value they pay out on your car.

I'd wait and see what happens rather than worrying about it.

aw16

Thank you. I’ve been worried sick about it for days.i don’t even care if I lose out on my car I just don’t want to be in debt to an insurance company for the 3rd party claim. However yes that’s exactly what happened it wasn’t a mechanical failure it was because I didn’t notice he was slowing and turning until it was too late and I had to slam on. However, I am now worried that due to the lack of mot they will try and avoid paying out by looking for faults with my car and as I haven’t had my car looked at in a while Or mot’d I’m worried they may find something and they might say it was because of that/ was unroadworthy/ contributed to the accident or whatever and void my policy even though it was purely human error. I changed my tyres not too long ago but I wouldn’t know about my brakes etc. I had to slam on for a child that stepped into the road a week or so ago though so I assume they’re fine. My own fault I know I should of double checked the Covid mot rules, I cant believe I was so stupid to be honest. I’ll just have to wait it out and see, so far they have been ok with the claim and even waivered my excess fee because I’m a nurse but obviously they haven’t properly assessed everything. 

sweetsand

Hi OP
More than 30 years ago my dad had an older car, a Ford Garnada, It was close to three years old but worth a few bob still. I recall dad looking for the mot cert as the insurance co had asked for it - the car was written off as a lorry drove into the back of it. The car had about 10k miles on the clock.
I'm guessing these days the ins may ask you if its mot'd as a standard question but will only check if the car is worth more than a couple of k's.
Indeed, people can forget and this Covid situ as in your case can be confusing.
Even in a worse case scenrio IMHO, you will get the full amount as you car may not be worth an amount that the ins makes extra checks on.

ATB

Goudy

There have been many attempts by insurance companies to get out of paying claims for no MOT and the FOS (when it's got that far) have nearly always favoured the policy holder if the car was considered roadworthy at the time of the accident by an independent motor engineer.

Sometimes it's been hard to tell after a big accident but generally the engineer will inspect things like tyres, brakes etc to attain if the car was in responable pre accident condition.
This can turn out a bit messy if the condition is thought to be the cause of the accident or was in a seriously unroadworthy condition.

As the claim is more often than not valid, the insurance company will value the car without MOT and the value they place on it will be seriously affected. How much depends on what their engineer thinks it was worth pre accident, obviously without MOT.

It was a while ago, but I remember 3 to 5 year old cars being valued around 15 to 25% less without an MOT and older stuff being up to 50 to 60% less, but it's all relative really.

I would expect the insurance company will see perhaps a clean driving record, a good MOT record under your onwership, few or no recent claims, an engineers report that confirms the car was in reasonable/good pre accident condition, weigh up the "covid" factor with the status of MOT extensions and come to a sane conclusion, but that's no guarantee!
 

sweetsand

Goudy said:

There have been many attempts by insurance companies to get out of paying claims for no MOT and the FOS (when it's got that far) have nearly always favoured the policy holder if the car was considered roadworthy at the time of the accident by an independent motor engineer.

Sometimes it's been hard to tell after a big accident but generally the engineer will inspect things like tyres, brakes etc to attain if the car was in responable pre accident condition.
This can turn out a bit messy if the condition is thought to be the cause of the accident or was in a seriously unroadworthy condition.

As the claim is more often than not valid, the insurance company will value the car without MOT and the value they place on it will be seriously affected. How much depends on what their engineer thinks it was worth pre accident, obviously without MOT.

It was a while ago, but I remember 3 to 5 year old cars being valued around 15 to 25% less without an MOT and older stuff being up to 50 to 60% less, but it's all relative really.

I would expect the insurance company will see perhaps a clean driving record, a good MOT record under your onwership, few or no recent claims, an engineers report that confirms the car was in reasonable/good pre accident condition, weigh up the "covid" factor with the status of MOT extensions and come to a sane conclusion, but that's no guarantee!
 

Thanks but the rules cleary state the car has to have the approiate items to make it road legal. I'm sure a good insurance co won't mess around if its over by a few days or week and you don't have a history of forgetting - I guess every case is different.

Neondude

Can I ask, what happened with the insurance company? I have just found myself in a similar situation!

GrumpyDil

Don't think you will get a reply from OP as last visit was October 20