Car hit by a third party car during police chase

Suebedoo2

My daughter had parked her car on a residential street. There was a police chase and the car being chased lost control and wrote off my daughters car. There is to be a court case but in the meantime, my daughter needs to renew her insurance on her replacement car. Unfortunately, the premium has trebled and as a student nurse she is not able to afford the bill. We have spoken to her insurance company who say it is likely this will end up as a fault claim. This seems so unfair. Is there anything we can do?

uknick

How can it be a fault claim if the car was parked and hit by a moving car?  Does her insurer mean fault claim at present, but reverting to no fault when it's all sorted?  Not that it helps her in the short time. 

Grey_Critic

Talk with an Insurance Broker they will know the intricacies of this far better than a call centre contact.

Grumpy_chap

If we assume that the car that was chased and crashed into the OP's daughter's parked car was not being driven by an authorised driver, then the OP's daughter's claim will be "at fault" in so far as there is no third party against which to counter-claim. 
"Fault" in this context does not mean that the OP's daughter did anything wrong.  It is all about whether the OP's daughter would suffer the loss but for the insurer stepping in.

force_ten1

uknick said:

How can it be a fault claim if the car was parked and hit by a moving car?  Does her insurer mean fault claim at present, but reverting to no fault when it's all sorted?  Not that it helps her in the short time. 

if the person driving the car that was being chased by the police had no insurance then the innocent parties insurance company will have to cover the cost of the damage caused to the parked car. so that would be considered an at fault

at fault or not at fault is more about which insurance company pays for the repairs. and if it is your own insurance that has to pay then that is considered to be at fault regardless of where you were at the time of the accident   

Aretnap

Grumpy_chap said:

If we assume that the car that was chased and crashed into the OP's daughter's parked car was not being driven by an authorised driver, then the OP's daughter's claim will be "at fault" in so far as there is no third party against which to counter-claim. 

If the car that was being chased had insurance on it and the driver was caught then it wouldn't matter whether he was authorised or not - the Road Traffic Act requires the vehicle's insurer to compensate third parties as if he had been named on the policy. This applies even if the vehicle has been stolen and being driven by the thief. So in that situation it would end up as a no fault claim.

If the driver couldn't be identified or if the car had no insurance of any sort covering it then things would be different - the MIB would cover the daughter's uninsured losses but not anything that she could claim for her own policy, so that would end up as a fault claim.

[Deleted User]

The OP needs to find out if the car was insured. If it was there is some hope. The insurance on the car should cover all your losses, including increased premiums.

Once the claim is decided to be no fault, the cost of insurance will fall. Of course that doesn't help in the short term, but if she gets insurance she should get a partial refund once the decision is made.

From there she can claim for the rest of the increase, keeping in mind that premiums have gone up in general. She might be able to claim interest costs if she had to borrow money to buy the insurance, but if she has savings or could pay monthly she should do that.