Driving into water - Are you covered by insurance for damage. Rufford

prowla

user1977 said:

Ebe_Scrooge said:

Insurance covers you for accidental damage (e.g. having a crash), not for normal wear and tear, routine maintenance or stupidity.

If it covers you for negligently (or "stupidly") crashing into other vehicles or solid objects, why wouldn't it cover you for stupidly driving into water?

Not for deliberately crashing into other vehicles or solid objects, though.

So why would it cover you for deliberately driving into water?

user1977

prowla said:

user1977 said:

Ebe_Scrooge said:

Insurance covers you for accidental damage (e.g. having a crash), not for normal wear and tear, routine maintenance or stupidity.

If it covers you for negligently (or "stupidly") crashing into other vehicles or solid objects, why wouldn't it cover you for stupidly driving into water?

Not for deliberately crashing into other vehicles or solid objects, though.

So why would it cover you for deliberately driving into water?

I expect none of the people driving through the ford is actually trying to wreck their vehicle though. They are (stupidly) misjudging the depths and/or the consequences of doing so. Rather different from predicting what would happen if you deliberately drove into a solid object.

400ixl

They would have to prove negligence which is different to stupidity.

eskbanker

happyc84 said:

I've been watching the drivers trying to get through the Ford at Rufford.

To be pedantic, from an insurance perspective (and many others), there's a big difference between driving into a Ford and driving into a ford....

spoovy

Wouldn't it depend on your car's wading depth vs the depth of the water you're traversing? My car's is 500mm I think; it's definitely listed in the handbook somewhere. 

Car_54

spoovy said:

Wouldn't it depend on your car's wading depth vs the depth of the water you're traversing? My car's is 500mm I think; it's definitely listed in the handbook somewhere. 

I imagine any "wading depth" assumes still water. Usual advice is to drive slowly, to avoid causing a bow wave, as seen in many of the incidents in the video clip above. 

Nobbie1967

My dad wrecked his engine driving through standing water on a flooded road. Insurance paid out no problem.

Grey_Critic

Once had a Ford Escort recovered in that had driven through water after a storm up in the Yorkshire Dales - The vehicle looked familier and when the driver came through the door we knew why. It was the General Accident engineer - it took a lot of living down.

Aretnap

user1977 said:

prowla said:

user1977 said:

Ebe_Scrooge said:

Insurance covers you for accidental damage (e.g. having a crash), not for normal wear and tear, routine maintenance or stupidity.

If it covers you for negligently (or "stupidly") crashing into other vehicles or solid objects, why wouldn't it cover you for stupidly driving into water?

Not for deliberately crashing into other vehicles or solid objects, though.

So why would it cover you for deliberately driving into water?

I expect none of the people driving through the ford is actually trying to wreck their vehicle though. They are (stupidly) misjudging the depths and/or the consequences of doing so. Rather different from predicting what would happen if you deliberately drove into a solid object.

Indeed. People deliberately drive into water all the time - at fords, through puddles and yes through small floods. Any damage that results is accidental damage, unless the driver somehow intended to damage his car deliberately.

It then becomes a question if whether the accidental damage section of the policy has an exclusion which would cover driving through a flood.

In theory there could be a specific exception along the lines of "we will not cover you for driving through floor water" - but I've never seen a policy that had an exclusion like that.

Or the insurer might try to rely on a general exclusion. Most policies have a clause along the lines of "you must take reasonable care of your vehicle". However the courts and the Ombudsman quite rightly don't like insurers relying on such vague clauses to deny claims so the level of stupidity required to active them is very high. They are generally interpreted as refering to recklessness - ie the insurer has to show that you knew, or must have known, that you were doing something unreasonably dangerous, but that you went ahead and did it anyway. That MIGHT apply if you drove into an obviously deep flood at high speed for laughs with your mates cheering you on, but it certainly wouldn't apply to misjudging the depth of a ford or large puddle, even if the misjudgement was rather silly with hindsight. The onus would be on the insurer to prove recklessness.

In practice it seems to b a non-issue. A search of Ombudsman decisions did bring up some cases where an insurer has declined a claim for driving through floodwater - but all the ones I found were like the one below where the insurer claimed that the damage was pre-existing and not caused by the water. It was taken for granted that if the damage WAS caused by driving through flood water, it would be covered.

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN0206090.pdf

It's reasonable to assume that if insurers were regularly declining claims for driving through flood water, it would show up in Ombudsman complaints.

DullGreyGuy

Generally these sorts of claims are presented to the insurer as the Policyholder seeing the floodwater but not realising how deep it was and so drove through it cautiously and the car got flooded. As such that would be a covered claim. As others have said, at least half of claims are from people doing something stupid/careless and insurers dont get to decline on the basis that they should have known they didn't have time to overtake or that their car was wider than the width restrictions etc.

Insurance doesn't provide cover for deliberate acts, drive into a wall in an attempt to end it all and the motor insurer would be entitled to decline the claim (if it chooses to do so is another mater). It would be a hard push to show someone driving into water was deliberate intention to cause damage.

As per @Aretnap's post though, growing up near a river there was a public carpark that every year or two would get several feet of floodwater in it. There was an amazing correlation between the days when a flood was being predicted and the number of old bangers parked in the carpark -v- any other evening. Clearly people thinking its a better way to liquidate their asset and probably hide existing mechanical problems.