Accidents/Claims - watch out for new wording on car insurance quotes

Sandtree

Shedman said:

Interestingly on chat with RIAS agent yesterday they said if your insurer has just noted it as Notification only then you shouldn't enter the incident in the quote,  but this seems at odds with the general advice that all incidents/accidents/claims should be declared.  Is the agent correct and, if so, does that apply to a quote for any insurer or is it just a RIAS thing?   I have to say I feel somewhat dubious about that advice.

To be on the safe side you simply answer the question asked.Do that honestly and you have little to fear but some over think and some are dishonest and that is where problems stem from 

Aretnap

daveyjp said:

You can't be virtually stationary, so as you were both moving you and somebody else hit each other.

I'm not convinced that this is (necessarily) correct. As a counter-example, if I were pootling along the road at 50mph minding my own business and someone came up from behind at 80mph and drove into the back of me, "someone hit me" would be a perfectly reasonable way to describe what happened.

I'd also say that in ordinary English, "someone hit me as a pulled out of a junction" is a reasonable way to describe a certain type of accident, even if it was my fault for not leaving a big enough gap, and even if I wasn't actually stationary at the moment of impact. Other ways of describing it are available of course, but that doesn't by itself make this one false or misleading.

Certainly insurers have a duty to ask clear questions, and where the wording is ambiguous, the ambiguity should be resolved in favour of the consumer. There are quite a lot of situations here where there would be significant ambiguity. Basically it seems like a terrible way to phrase the question.