Caught without Insurance but have a valid Certificate of Insurance

Frank_DeFord

Hi Forum,

Here's a doozy: My car insurance which had always auto-renewed did not auto-renew. The emails all looked the same to me, and I should have checked and double-checked, but this year instead of an auto-renewal, it cancelled.

I was on a journey, and during that journey a camera picked it up and sent me a letter, informing me that I didn't have insurance, but it was not an intent to prosecute. Had I not been on a trip and received that letter, I would have sorted it out straight away.

Be that as it may, I was (later on the trip) pulled over by an officer who had been pinged by a camera that I was uninsured. He asked me to search my inbox, and I couldn't find that my insurance had renewed. So he issued me an on-the-spot ticket for £200 and 6 points.

However, I now have a certificate of insurance from my insurer that shows that at the time and date of the offence given by the officer, I was insured (the policy begins 9 minutes before the ticket was issued.) So I have plead not guilty?

I'm due in front of Magistrates next week. I've never ever not had insurance on any car, this is a total lapse, but now I have this certificate of insurance that says I was insured!

What do I do??

DullGreyGuy

You need to put some dates/times to this thing...

What time/date did your last policy expire?
What was the time/date you were stopped?

How have you gotten a certificate of insurance for the following year if your policy didnt renew?
Why didnt your policy renew?

theoretica

One possibility seems to be that after being stopped the OP then sorted insurance, but the certificate was dated to noon or something - before they actually sorted the insurance, and before they were stopped.  I doubt retrospective insurance would count.

giraffe69

I don't think "the emails all looked the same to  me" is going to provide a successful defence.

MattMattMattUK

Frank_DeFord said:

Hi Forum,

Here's a doozy: My car insurance which had always auto-renewed did not auto-renew. The emails all looked the same to me, and I should have checked and double-checked, but this year instead of an auto-renewal, it cancelled.

I was on a journey, and during that journey a camera picked it up and sent me a letter, informing me that I didn't have insurance, but it was not an intent to prosecute. Had I not been on a trip and received that letter, I would have sorted it out straight away.

Be that as it may, I was (later on the trip) pulled over by an officer who had been pinged by a camera that I was uninsured. He asked me to search my inbox, and I couldn't find that my insurance had renewed. So he issued me an on-the-spot ticket for £200 and 6 points.

However, I now have a certificate of insurance from my insurer that shows that at the time and date of the offence given by the officer, I was insured (the policy begins 9 minutes before the ticket was issued.) So I have plead not guilty?

I'm due in front of Magistrates next week. I've never ever not had insurance on any car, this is a total lapse, but now I have this certificate of insurance that says I was insured!

What do I do??

As others have said, on the basis that you were on a road and it probably took far more than nine minutes before the ticket was issued, you are likely onto a hiding to nothing with having pleaded not guilty as you almost certainly are. 

Do not drive to court, there is a reasonable chance you could lose your license and be unable to drive home. Whilst the police can issue you with a fine up to £300 and six points, the court can impose an unlimited fine and disqualify you from driving. As you have pleaded not guilty, if found guilty and from what you have said you will likely end up in Category 3, although the fact that you had previous notice of driving without insurance might bounce you up for Cat. 2. 
Cat 3 would result in a fine of 75-175% of weekly income and 6-8 points
Cat 2 would result in a fine of 125-175% of weekly income and 8 points or a six month disqualification

I would recommend you try and speak to either a solicitor or Citizen's Advice, they may advise changing your plea to guilty to gain some mitigation, but it may also be too late for that to have any real effect. 

Frank_DeFord

Yes, thanks both. I agree that retrospective would not count, but that's impossible to do. Buying insurance is either 'from now' or 'in the future.' Buying insurance for a previous date or time is, frankly, illegal I would suppose. I'm totally up front here: my insurance lapsed in late March, the officer pulled me in June. I was driving without insurance, and I am wholly grateful to the officer for pointing this out. I had absolutely no idea I was not covered.

I believe this to be a BST/ GMT lapse, whereby the insurance system issued my insurance as GMT, and as it was BST, the start time 'for the purposes of the law' appeared an hour earlier than actually issued (although GMT is not brought up on either the ticket nor the document.)

It's a weird space-time continuum. The document shows I was insured at the date and time of the ticket, but I know that to be inaccurate, although I did nothing to affect the document shy of purchasing it immediately as the officer left.

Frank_DeFord

To put times on it, the officer issued the ticket at a time of 20:41, the insurance certificate shows a start time of 20:32.

Frank_DeFord

giraffe69 said:

I don't think "the emails all looked the same to  me" is going to provide a successful defence.

Totally agree here.

DullGreyGuy

Frank_DeFord said:

Yes, thanks both. I agree that retrospective would not count, but that's impossible to do. Buying insurance is either 'from now' or 'in the future.' Buying insurance for a previous date or time is, frankly, illegal I would suppose. I'm totally up front here: my insurance lapsed in late March, the officer pulled me in June. I was driving without insurance, and I am wholly grateful to the officer for pointing this out. I had absolutely no idea I was not covered.

I believe this to be a BST/ GMT lapse, whereby the insurance system issued my insurance as GMT, and as it was BST, the start time 'for the purposes of the law' appeared an hour earlier than actually issued (although GMT is not brought up on either the ticket nor the document.)

It's a weird space-time continuum. The document shows I was insured at the date and time of the ticket, but I know that to be inaccurate, although I did nothing to affect the document shy of purchasing it immediately as the officer left.

It's not illegal to buy retroactive insurance at all... insurers themselves do it all the time. When it comes to certain classes, the policy may be backdated months but then the policy is set to run for over 50 years so proportionally its not much. 

Insurers generally don't like doing it for the obvious reason that you are effectively betting on a race already run and they would be on the hook for something thats already happened. 


So the bit of the story that wasn't clear was that you bought a new policy and believe it was effectively backdated one hour potentially due to a GMT/BST mixup. 

I mean, I'd take the lower cost option of putting your hands up now than go to court and face the risk of a higher penalty. If you are certain on the time/timezones you could ask the insurer to give you a letter of indemnity confirming they would have covered any incidents that occurred at the time/date of the officer stopping you (being clear on timezone). Insurers produce these often enough when they've messed up and recorded a registration plate wrong or such 

prowla

So, to clarify: you were issued a fine for not being insured at a precise point in time when you were insured.

There is nothing in the UK to say that you have to carry proof of insurance AFAIK.

Did you do the renewal via phone? If so, you would normally be insured from then.

It seems to me that this is a case where a bit of common-sense could/should be applied.

But then again, that wouldn't help the revenue stream.

Dave_5150

Frank_DeFord said:

Yes, thanks both. I agree that retrospective would not count, but that's impossible to do. Buying insurance is either 'from now' or 'in the future.' Buying insurance for a previous date or time is, frankly, illegal I would suppose. I'm totally up front here: my insurance lapsed in late March, the officer pulled me in June. I was driving without insurance, and I am wholly grateful to the officer for pointing this out. I had absolutely no idea I was not covered.

I believe this to be a BST/ GMT lapse, whereby the insurance system issued my insurance as GMT, and as it was BST, the start time 'for the purposes of the law' appeared an hour earlier than actually issued (although GMT is not brought up on either the ticket nor the document.)

It's a weird space-time continuum. The document shows I was insured at the date and time of the ticket, but I know that to be inaccurate, although I did nothing to affect the document shy of purchasing it immediately as the officer left.

So why have you plead 'not guilty'?