hit by a can driver later found out by my insurance he wasn't insured - need help and advice

delicatediamond

In October 2024, 2 weeks in to Uber driving I was hit a van driver from the back. I was stationary at the zebra crossing and waiting for pedestrian to cross a van driver hit me from behind. we exchange the details since it was Saturday I informed the insurance company and gave all the details. The insurance repaired my car in 10 days time and I was back at work. Today I received an email from my insurance saying that the driver was not insured and its has been noted in the system as "my fault". I contact the van driver (says he left the job because of this accident and gave me his boss number - The boss say that all his driver are insured and he asked me to contact his insurance broker for his policy details ( I know the insurance broker won't provide me any details of the policy to me) . My question is what can I do on this situation. my insurance company say the driver is uninsured and the boss (of the van driver) says the driver is insured. What must I do. Please help and advice. thank you in advance  

DE_612183

Are you sure it's not down as a "no fault" - this basically means that the insurance company can't recover costs from the other driver.

DullGreyGuy

delicatediamond said:

In October 2024, 2 weeks in to Uber driving I was hit a van driver from the back. I was stationary at the zebra crossing and waiting for pedestrian to cross a van driver hit me from behind. we exchange the details since it was Saturday I informed the insurance company and gave all the details. The insurance repaired my car in 10 days time and I was back at work. Today I received an email from my insurance saying that the driver was not insured and its has been noted in the system as "my fault". I contact the van driver (says he left the job because of this accident and gave me his boss number - The boss say that all his driver are insured and he asked me to contact his insurance broker for his policy details ( I know the insurance broker won't provide me any details of the policy to me) . My question is what can I do on this situation. my insurance company say the driver is uninsured and the boss (of the van driver) says the driver is insured. What must I do. Please help and advice. thank you in advance  

Who are your insurers? Are you claiming directly with them or via an accident management company?

The broker may very well give you the details, you can after all buy them for £10 from the MID. This is also presumably a company and not a private individual and therefore do not have the same levels of data protection even if it weren't for the fact that ultimately insurance details is public record for Motor and Employers Liability (as the two forms of compulsory insurance). 

Normal action for an insurer is to check the MID, there searches like the £10 one you can do, gets insurance details as at a specified date. With consumer insurance the insurer or broker enters the details for you. For commercial insurance it's often the policyholder who has to do this. 

Assuming the MID check comes back as no entry for the date of loss then they will typically write to the name/address given and do a DVLA check on who the registered keeper is and write to them as well if its different to the details given. It's clearly speculation if they gave some details and the insurer checked them and were told they are wrong or if they ignored the letter. 

An insurer cannot recover their outlay from the MIB and so for modest losses they may decide its the end of the line and not worth incurring more costs in attempting recovery. That said, if a company is the registered keeper you can do more basic checks online around their registered address, their financial position etc and on if its likely they would have the funds to repay the outlay baring in mind that the cost of recovery itself cannot be recovered in the small track court proceedings. 

Were you claiming injury or such then your solicitors would be approaching the MIB who would make their own investigations into if there was insurance in force. 

Firstly call your insurers and find out what they've done and how they've come to the conclusion it's uninsured. 

You could call the broker, after, to see if they will give you the details however "speak to my broker" is a common way of shrugging someone off when you know damned well that you dont have insurance. 

delicatediamond

my insurance company was  the recommended by uber (I am not sure if I can name the company. Can I ? let me know if will write it down)  and I was claiming with them directly. I paid £500 for excess claim and was claiming £1500 for lost of earning. but the thing which is made me upset is that its comes to me as my fault in the system which is going to increase my insurance for next year. I am a very simple person and don't understand how to deal with these kind of thing I have never been in to an accident. so I am like all of the place trying to find our what to do in the most simple manner. 

DullGreyGuy

delicatediamond said:

my insurance company was  the recommended by uber (I am not sure if I can name the company. Can I ? let me know if will write it down)  and I was claiming with them directly. I paid £500 for excess claim and was claiming £1500 for lost of earning. but the thing which is made me upset is that its comes to me as my fault in the system which is going to increase my insurance for next year. I am a very simple person and don't understand how to deal with these kind of thing I have never been in to an accident. so I am like all of the place trying to find our what to do in the most simple manner. 

You are free to name companies if you want to and free to not name them if you dont. 

The insurance industry made a big mistake when it decided upon the terms "fault" and "non-fault" because that makes it sound like it has to do with blame and whilst it is often correlated to blame, when talking about accidents anyway (rather than fire, theft etc) its not a 1-1 relationship. What it really comes down to is, at the end of the claim, does the insurer have a net outlay or not. So you can have a hit and run accident, thats fault because the person that is to blame is unidentified and so they cannot get their money back. On the flip side you can be fully to blame for an accident but the third party decides they dont want to claim and so thats a non-fault claim. 

A number of consumer insurers over the years have introduced various "promises" where they treat a traditionally fault claim as a non-fault one, like vandalism, hit and run, hit an animal or uninsured drivers. These types of marketing tools are much less common in the commercial insurance space. 

delicatediamond

ok, undertand - i will call the insurance tomorrow and the brokers as you advised in your pervious comments. I shall come back and update her. thank you very much 

delicatediamond

Update - I contacted my insurance to provide me information of how they came the conclusion that the "van driver wasn't insured" they came back and said the same thing that the Van drivers doesn't have any insurance we they cannot claim any money.

I contact the Van driver Insurance company- they refused to provide any information and said if the incident is reported then let both the insurance company deal with the case.

So I got no information from any where.

what should I do now?

DullGreyGuy

delicatediamond said:

Update - I contacted my insurance to provide me information of how they came the conclusion that the "van driver wasn't insured" they came back and said the same thing that the Van drivers doesn't have any insurance we they cannot claim any money.

I contact the Van driver Insurance company- they refused to provide any information and said if the incident is reported then let both the insurance company deal with the case.

So I got no information from any where.

what should I do now?

Given you claimed off your insurance it's really for them to lead the process. Were you to litigate you would need to be talking to them about their outlay, in principle you would need to include it in your claim but were the third party insurer identified then well the whole thing is different... if its a dispute on liability rather than if the vehicle is insured then the insurers can agree to keep costs out and just settle on the basis of the judgement to keep it in small track. Never had a case where its instead a question of no insurance. 

In principle you could sent a letter before action to the driver and/or the company stating that neither you nor your insurers have been provided with the details of the policy covering the vehicle and therefore you are holding them directly liable and will issue proceedings in 28 days unless confirmation of the insurer, policy number and the claims reference are provided. 

sheramber

It may be the driver was using the van for a purpose he was not insured for.

A car travelling behind my husband was hit by an oncoming van, resulting in the death of the car driver.

When it went to court it was revealed that the van driver only had insurance cover from his employer for business use, not for personal use.  Hw was on a night out so not insured.

DullGreyGuy

sheramber said:

It may be the driver was using the van for a purpose he was not insured for.

A car travelling behind my husband was hit by an oncoming van, resulting in the death of the car driver.

When it went to court it was revealed that the van driver only had insurance cover from his employer for business use, not for personal use.  Hw was on a night out so not insured.

In that circumstance the insurer of the vehicle has to settle the third party claim but then has a right of recovery from the driver and potentially also the policyholder if they were complicit in allowing them to use the vehicle outside the terms of the insurance. 

delicatediamond

thank you very much for all the help and comments