Help! Potential prosecution for driving with no insurance

saint87george

Hi everyone,

So I'm in a bit of a pickle.
On Monday a family friend of mine asked if I would take a look at his daughters car as it was leaking coolant, they dont have a lot of money so my good will convinced me to help. 
I'm a skilled technician so know my way around cars and took a look for them for free.
Long story short I did some checks and filled the coolant system etc and decided to drive the car round my very quiet estate to get it warm and surpassed the speed limit (my fault obvs)
However they didnt tell me the car has a black box fitted for her insurance, and have contacted her threatening to cancel her insurance for the driving and she told them she wasnt driving it, so theyve asked her for proof of who was driving which I said Im happy to give her (as i know they wont prosecute me for the speeding).
However, on my insurance the ability to drive another car third party isnt an option which I thought it was, meaning Ive now drove her car illegally with no insurance!!

What is the best thing to do?
Do i have any options other than declare it was me driving with no insurance?
Are they likely to inform the police meaning I will get points and a fine?
Am i able to declare it was me driving but deny permission to forward my details any further than their company?

Any advice appreciated.

And yes I know I should of checked my insurance and shouldnt of been speeding etc so please no obvious Karen statements.

Thanks 

cw8825

its unlikely her insurance company will report you to the police. They may still cancel her policy for allowing you to drive uninsured

if you are a skilled technician and also have that occupation on your insurances, its unlikely you will have DOC - they don't like giving it to people in the motor trade

FlorayG

@DullGreyGuy is needed here I think

DullGreyGuy

saint87george said:

Hi everyone,

So I'm in a bit of a pickle.
On Monday a family friend of mine asked if I would take a look at his daughters car as it was leaking coolant, they dont have a lot of money so my good will convinced me to help. 
I'm a skilled technician so know my way around cars and took a look for them for free.
Long story short I did some checks and filled the coolant system etc and decided to drive the car round my very quiet estate to get it warm and surpassed the speed limit (my fault obvs)
However they didnt tell me the car has a black box fitted for her insurance, and have contacted her threatening to cancel her insurance for the driving and she told them she wasnt driving it, so theyve asked her for proof of who was driving which I said Im happy to give her (as i know they wont prosecute me for the speeding).
However, on my insurance the ability to drive another car third party isnt an option which I thought it was, meaning Ive now drove her car illegally with no insurance!!

What is the best thing to do?
Do i have any options other than declare it was me driving with no insurance?
Are they likely to inform the police meaning I will get points and a fine?
Am i able to declare it was me driving but deny permission to forward my details any further than their company?

Any advice appreciated.

And yes I know I should of checked my insurance and shouldnt of been speeding etc so please no obvious Karen statements.

Removing Driving Other Cars has become a common tool to get quote prices down given people are willing to switch insurers to save less than £5 a year even when it means going from a household name to some unknown offshore company. 

It will very much come down to their insurer's procedures. In my claims days blackbox insurance existed but wasnt a product we offered, we did however get cases where a claim is registered against one of our insureds, we contact them, they say their friend was driving, we contact their friend and they say they thought they had DOC but when they send us a copy of the certificate it shows they didnt. 

In terms of your concerns, for us we wouldn't be considering contacting the police, nor would we immediately consider cancelling the policyholder's policy for allowing it to happen. In our position though we were more concerned about the third party claim and both driver and policyholder would be required to sign indemnities for reimbursing us for whatever the claim was that was presented.

Your situation will be slightly different because there is no claim involved. I would be surprised if the insurer would be bothered to report it to the police. I suspect as its a non-claims situation they may have more concerns about continuing their policyholder's policy but if you put your hands up saying it was all you then they may just advise their PH that they should check rather than taking someones word. 

Unfortunately cannot give you certainty as there is no legal requirement for them to take a course of action or another. 

Obviously your options are:
1) Tell the truth and hope honesty pays, which it probably but not certainly will
2) Fabricate that some other person was driving that does have DOC and risk markers being applied for fraud

saint87george

Thank you all for your responses,

My friends daughter is now fretting that shes going to be penalised for 'allowing' me access to the car without checking my insurance details first. I've told her at the end of the day shes no way at fault as shes left the car on my drive with the understanding I would not be driving it so should not suffer any repercussions.

Looks like I have 2 options:
1- I contact her insurance company and confirm it was me driving the car not her and send a copy of my insurance documents, playing dumb to the fact I dont have the ability to drive another car on my insurance policy.

2- I contact her insurance company, explain the situation regarding her needing advice on her leaking vehicle worrying about if she can pay for it to be fixed, confess to driving her car with no insurance, even though I was to the understanding I was insured and hope they don't decide to inform the police of my actions.

What do you think? 


 

cw8825

tbh she just needs to tell them it was you driving after repairing the car. 
as already said very worst case, they wont allow her to continue the policy because she let you drive

saint87george

Surely they would allow her to carry on the policy though? Its not her fault is it

saint87george

She didnt 'allow me' to drive the car uninsured, she didnt give me permission to drive her car so what has she done wrong?

cw8825

she has given you the keys and the car

that's the way the insurers will see it. they are not really interested in the speeding.

for example - lets say parents have a policy, the child is not named on it
child 'borrows' car to impress friends
if the parents don't say the child has stolen/taken without consent the insurers will say that they are allowing the child to drive the car and could cancel the policy because its leaving them open to have to deal with a bigger claim

we are talking worst case scenario at the moment all you can do is admit is was you driving and then respond to what comes next

DullGreyGuy

saint87george said:

Thank you all for your responses,

My friends daughter is now fretting that shes going to be penalised for 'allowing' me access to the car without checking my insurance details first. I've told her at the end of the day shes no way at fault as shes left the car on my drive with the understanding I would not be driving it so should not suffer any repercussions.

Looks like I have 2 options:
1- I contact her insurance company and confirm it was me driving the car not her and send a copy of my insurance documents, playing dumb to the fact I dont have the ability to drive another car on my insurance policy.

2- I contact her insurance company, explain the situation regarding her needing advice on her leaking vehicle worrying about if she can pay for it to be fixed, confess to driving her car with no insurance, even though I was to the understanding I was insured and hope they don't decide to inform the police of my actions.

What do you think? 

Take one step at a time. In the first instance confirm that it was you driving at the time. Wait for them to ask for any further information that they want about your driving licence or what insurance was covering you etc etc. 

saint87george said:

Surely they would allow her to carry on the policy though? Its not her fault is it

If they dig in and find out you didnt have DOC or any other form of insurance then they might, but if after that you confirm you did say you were covered and it was purely your mistake then they may be more lenient. 

The "problem" is the RTA requires them as the insurer of the vehicle to payout on any claim even though you are not covered by the policy. A minor fender bender and it's not so bad, you pay them back the £3,000 and thats the end of it. If it's a more major accident is when the problems happen because, with one of my cases, the claim was £75,000 and the driver didnt have that kind of money to repay us. There are other cases with much higher values too.

Had the accident happened you automatically are liable per the RTA to repay the insurer but so would she be if she had consented to your driving it, even if was due to accidental misrepresentation by you on the DOC. The above case was when the policyholder's son had taken the car "without permission" but we required them to report their son to the police for the theft of the motor vehicle else we will consider it was with permission and therefore they will become liable for the £75k (which we are much more likely to succeed in getting the money back from than a 18yo school kid)

saint87george

Ok but in this instance there were no claims invoved?