Insurance write offs for S and N category vehicles

Lifeofbrian2

That'll do.

AdrianC

Lifeofbrian2 said:

I know legally that A and B category vehicle must be scrapped

Not quite...

The insurance industry want them to be scrapped, but that carries no legal weight.

DVLA will not ever re-issue a V5C, but again that doesn't force the car to be scrapped... It could be exported.

so the presumption is that S and N categories are sold on sometimes without informing the buyer

Cat S states that the car has been written off on the V5C, so there shouldn't be any hiding the status.

iainscomputer

I find the Insurance write off categories not really fit for purpose! Cars get written off just because the hire car costs are too much, a year old car can be repaired, while a 3 year old car with identical damage will be written off. 

Cars that have been repaired will have no official record of this repair to be available to future owners.
In the US they have the Carfax system where all insurance repairs are recorded on the cars vin & history, this is a much better system than the one that we have here in the UK.

AdrianC

iainscomputer said:

I find the Insurance write off categories not really fit for purpose! Cars get written off just because the hire car costs are too much, a year old car can be repaired, while a 3 year old car with identical damage will be written off.

What's the priority of the insurer?

The car? No. The cost.

If it's cheaper to write it off and pay the value, than to have it sitting around waiting to be repaired, of COURSE they'll do that. They don't care about the car itself.

Sandtree

iainscomputer said:

I find the Insurance write off categories not really fit for purpose! Cars get written off just because the hire car costs are too much, a year old car can be repaired, while a 3 year old car with identical damage will be written off. 

Cars that have been repaired will have no official record of this repair to be available to future owners.
In the US they have the Carfax system where all insurance repairs are recorded on the cars vin & history, this is a much better system than the one that we have here in the UK.

That is exactly the point of cat C/D/N/S - they are beyond economical repair not unrepairable. 

The US whole insurance system is very different with own damage cover being much rarer and even third party losses only being insured to a very modest level in some states. 

The issue with the proposal is that at the moment few will claim for £500 damage, some for £750 and most for £1,000... start saying there is an official record only if you go via your insurers and you'll just move those values up at £750 minus excess minus having declarable damage just isnt economic any more.

angrycrow

The salvage catagory is set by the insurance companies engineer. These days it is often done off images and the engineer never actually sees the car before setting the salvage catagory. They make a best guess on whether there is structural damage based on the photos.

I am not an engineer but I have looked at hundreds of damaged cars as part of my job. It is simple not always possible to tell if the chassis is bent until the car is stripped and measurements are taken.

Family member recently had a crash, from photos it looked like it needed a bumper, wing and crash bar at front. When I stripped it to assess repairing outside insurance it also needed a new front panel, cooling and aircon rads, new power steering pipes a new bonnet and the chassis leg was bent. On the basis of the photos the insurer classed it as a cat n.

People buying scrapped cars from salvage auctions need to accept that the cat d / n car may turn out to be unrepairable as further damage is found on stripping. You also have no way of knowing if the car had other underlying mechanical problems prior to being in an accident. 

Buying salvage cars which have already been repaired is also a gamble as you don't know the extent of the original damage. A shiny bumper can hide a multitude of bodges.

Buyer beware. 

Sandtree

Lifeofbrian2 said:
Thanks - it would be interesting to know just how many unsafe cars and other vehicles are in circulation.  That's what interests me!

Gut feel, rather than professional calculations... the number of "unsafe" vehicles resulting from total loss settlements that are subsequently returned to the road in an unroadworthy condition are going to be tiny in comparison to the vehicles that are unsafe because they've bald tyres, worn out brakes etc. 

Anecdotally there were over 10m failed MOTs in 2018 whereas only 384k of cars were written off in 2017. Ok some of the MOT failures will be on environmental grounds rather than safety but some of the total loss cars will be stolen or A/Bs that went to breakers.

AdrianC

Lifeofbrian2 said:

The govt. introduced the VIC scheme in 2004 (I think) and ditched it in 2015 because they weren't getting the numbers to justify its existence.

That's understatement of the year.

Remember, VICs only applied to CatC write-offs being returned to the road, and they were purely a check on IDENTITY - there's a clue in the name. Not on quality of repair or on roadworthiness.

In the 14 years the scheme was in operation, 916,000 cars went through the test. Forty failed it. Yes, 40 in 14 years.

That's 65,400 per year on average, with fewer than three failures.
One failure every four months, roughly every 22,000 tests...

So, yes, "weren't getting the numbers to justify its existence" is an understatement...

I just wonder - is the way out of this morass to have QR reader on VIN plates for all vehicles so that their history is available to whoever wants to know?

What would a QR add over just the VIN...? Apart from not having to type 17 characters, of course...

Lifeofbrian2

Wonderful ideas!  sometimes nay-sayers offer the best information - thanks for your input - I will consider all this when writing my report.  Nothing wrong with global standards - it could be fit in to a UNECE type global technical regulation e.g. WP.29 tied in with WP.1 - which looks at global road safety.  Shame my partner no longer attends these meetings as he could have brought it into the discussions there.  I'll have find somebody else!  :-)

Sandtree

Lifeofbrian2 said:

Sandtree said:

Lifeofbrian2 said:
Thanks - it would be interesting to know just how many unsafe cars and other vehicles are in circulation.  That's what interests me!

Gut feel, rather than professional calculations... the number of "unsafe" vehicles resulting from total loss settlements that are subsequently returned to the road in an unroadworthy condition are going to be tiny in comparison to the vehicles that are unsafe because they've bald tyres, worn out brakes etc. 

Anecdotally there were over 10m failed MOTs in 2018 whereas only 384k of cars were written off in 2017. Ok some of the MOT failures will be on environmental grounds rather than safety but some of the total loss cars will be stolen or A/Bs that went to breakers.

I think  you might be right - you certainly make a valid point. I got hold of the DVLA data for S and N (though it was only the MIAFTR data - I've written back to ask for all sources, the MIAFTR numbers are significant - around 250k per year for S and N).  Still, it would be interesting to know just how many are sold on to unsuspecting buyers and more importantly are unsafe.  

Cat S is marked on the V5 and so whilst they may not know at point of sale if you combine a dishonest sales person with a customer that doesn't do a HPI check they will know shortly after when the new V5 turns up.

In theory Cat N shouldn't be covertly unsafe, though could be overtly unsafe with sharp metal edges from torn panels or broken glass (eg a T/L from a theft from vehicle) but as noted above, there is always a risk that the unpaid garage misses something when doing the photographs for the desk based engineer who then does the write off classification. Ultimately if you dont strip the car there is always a risk something is missed.

Add to that, T/L category is based on the accident damage... the car could have been a death trap before the accident with issues with the brakes, tyres etc (could be why it was involved in the accident in the first place) but could still be a cat N but tis being unsafe is unrelated to the total loss.

Lifeofbrian2

Sandtree said:

In theory Cat N shouldn't be covertly unsafe, though could be overtly unsafe with sharp metal edges from torn panels or broken glass (eg a T/L from a theft from vehicle) but as noted above, there is always a risk that the unpaid garage misses something when doing the photographs for the desk based engineer who then does the write off classification. Ultimately if you dont strip the car there is always a risk something is missed.

Add to that, T/L category is based on the accident damage... the car could have been a death trap before the accident with issues with the brakes, tyres etc (could be why it was involved in the accident in the first place) but could still be a cat N but tis being unsafe is unrelated to the total loss.

Thanks - I worked for many years with the police on stolen vehicles - mainly looking at the data - and as I found out - the insurance industry has a lot to answer for.