AIrbag/car repairs - autistic son 20 January at 6:12PM in Insurance & life assurance 6 replies 238 views

Grace_C

My 10 year old son with autism had a meltdown in the car (whilst parked) which involved him kicking the steering wheel very hard. The car horn no longer works, the airbag light came on and I have found out the airbag needs replacing and the electronic bits/wiring around this. The parts purchased have to be genuine VW parts which are coming in at approx £2200, and the MOT is due in a few days which will fail. All very unfortunate timing and a cost I can't afford.

Does anyone know if my car insurance can help with this? Will they cover this type of damage? I am fully comp and I can see that my Insurance covers vandalism - my son however did not do this on purpose or even know what he was doing - it was a meltdown.

My tiguan is 2015 and has done approx 85k miles. I am not sure it's worth getting the repairs done but i need a car.

Any advice here would be appreciated - thanks for reading.

SaverRate

Have you had multiple garages quote for the work? Have you also gone to a VW main dealer as a price comparison?

Probably the only way to find out if your insurers will pay out is call then but then they may lodge it as a claim even if you dont end up claiming so be careful!

user1977

I would say it's more "accidental" damage than vandalism - but I don't know whether motor insurance would cover a passenger accidentally damaging the car.

DullGreyGuy

Grace_C said:

Does anyone know if my car insurance can help with this? Will they cover this type of damage? I am fully comp and I can see that my Insurance covers vandalism - my son however did not do this on purpose or even know what he was doing - it was a meltdown.

It could go either way... it'd more likely be considered under the AD section but that will typically exclude deliberate actions and so the question is if they accept it wasn't a deliberate act... their age will probably help. It's worth reading the exact wording though, it's normally intended to exclude a PH intentionally crashing their car and the same exclusion may not extend to passengers. 

Unfortunately these things aren't straightforward, I was aware of a case of a policyholder's teenager self immolated causing substantial damage to the property. Whilst some may say covering yourself in petrol and lighting a match means you aren't in your right mind under protocols established long before mental health care is what it is today, the fact they planned it by going out to buy the fuel etc ultimately won over and so was a conscious decision and so the claim was declined. 

TELLIT01

As has been suggested above, only your current insurer can answer the question. It certainly isn't a cut and dried 'Yes' or 'No'.

rigolith

Vandalism probably only covers criminal damage.

Grace_C

Thank you all that responded. Happy to confirm my insurer is sorting this out via accidental damage and there was issues around getting it sorted out.