Does no MOT mean no Insurance?

[woodyTVR]

Chap I know had a smash last week entirely his fault/ He's probably written his car off and two others.

The Police were called, no one hurt but turns out his MOT has lapsed. I presume his insurance will cover the 3rd parties. Will it cover his car?

What can he expect from the Police? I've no idea how lapsed it was.

[R8Steve]

The car will still be insured and they will still pay out.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Agreed. Although if car is a write off the market value will be based on a car with no valid MOT. Happened to my sister in law. They reduced payout by 15%

[woodyTVR]

Thanks guys that's what I thought but google suggest otherwise.

What's the minimum on no MOT from Police assuming they give him that? Is there a fixed penalty?

[agtlaw]

woodyTVR said:

Thanks guys that's what I thought but google suggests otherwise.

What's the minimum on no MOT from Police assuming they give him that? Is there a fixed penalty?

Google is wrong.

Non-endorsable £100 fixed penalty.

[woodyTVR]

agtlaw said:

Google is wrong.

Non-endorsable £100 fixed penalty.

thank you.

[caelite]

Can we just close this thread and sticky it at this exact point? Would save a lot of legwork in future.

[vikingaero]

My quote from 6 years ago:

"Those who say that a insurance is void if there is no MOT are WRONG and talking the usual pub lore bullox.

A car can be perfectly roadworthy without a MOT. Indeed there are only a handful of Insurers who state that a MOT is required as part of the terms of the Policy. And indeed some Insurers have tried to blag it and refused to pay out where a car that was subject to a claim had no MOT.

Unfortunately for the Insurers, many people have taken their Insurers to the Financial Ombudsman. The FOS has time and time again upheld complaints that the requirement for a MOT is not reason to refuse a payout where the condition of the vehicle has no bearing on the accident. However the Insurer is at liberty to lower the payout to the value of a vehicle without a MOT."

There are still some Insurers that have this in their Policy Documents and insist that a car must be MOTed for the insurance to be valid. No doubt they will have turned down many claims incorrectly/negligently/fraudulently and the Policyholder will have accepted it and walked away without a payout not knowing the rules. There are still claims agents who will lie on behalf of Insurers.

Check out this crap site:

https://www.policyexpert.co.uk/insurance-blog/moto...

Help with valuations on non MOTed cars:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130117224154/http://f...

[98elise]

vikingaero said:

My quote from 6 years ago:

"Those who say that a insurance is void if there is no MOT are WRONG and talking the usual pub lore bullox.

A car can be perfectly roadworthy without a MOT. Indeed there are only a handful of Insurers who state that a MOT is required as part of the terms of the Policy. And indeed some Insurers have tried to blag it and refused to pay out where a car that was subject to a claim had no MOT.

Unfortunately for the Insurers, many people have taken their Insurers to the Financial Ombudsman. The FOS has time and time again upheld complaints that the requirement for a MOT is not reason to refuse a payout where the condition of the vehicle has no bearing on the accident. However the Insurer is at liberty to lower the payout to the value of a vehicle without a MOT."

There are still some Insurers that have this in their Policy Documents and insist that a car must be MOTed for the insurance to be valid. No doubt they will have turned down many claims incorrectly/negligently/fraudulently and the Policyholder will have accepted it and walked away without a payout not knowing the rules. There are still claims agents who will lie on behalf of Insurers.

Check out this crap site:

https://www.policyexpert.co.uk/insurance-blog/moto...

Help with valuations on non MOTed cars:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130117224154/http://f...

Yup.

An MOT does not mean a car is roadworthy, and no MOT does not mean a car is unroadworthy.

An MOT means your car is not yet due it's next annual test.

Edited by 98elise on Wednesday 31st May 08:38

[Pip1968]

agtlaw said:

Google is wrong.

Non-endorsable £100 fixed penalty.

Presumably that would change if the car was found to be unsafe and a likely cause or contribution to the accident ie x4 bald tyres, no brake pads/ corroded discs - ? Obviously I have had to give examples of things apparent after a smash up when you could probably otherwise add no functioning brake lights/indicators/headlights.

Seems a bit mad that drive at 88mph on the mtorway and you get 3 points and £100 thrown at you but drive a car which may be unsafe and just fork out £100 when an MoT is £55.

Pip

[xjay1337]

Pip1968 said:

Presumably that would change if the car was found to be unsafe and a likely cause or contribution to the accident ie x4 bald tyres, no brake pads/ corroded discs - ? Obviously I have had to give examples of things apparent after a smash up when you could probably otherwise add no functioning brake lights/indicators/headlights.

Seems a bit mad that drive at 88mph on the mtorway and you get 3 points and £100 thrown at you but drive a car which may be unsafe and just fork out £100 when an MoT is £55.

Pip

That would be a different kettle of fish then

[Retroman]

Pip1968 said:

Presumably that would change if the car was found to be unsafe and a likely cause or contribution to the accident ie x4 bald tyres, no brake pads/ corroded discs - ? Obviously I have had to give examples of things apparent after a smash up when you could probably otherwise add no functioning brake lights/indicators/headlights.

Seems a bit mad that drive at 88mph on the mtorway and you get 3 points and £100 thrown at you but drive a car which may be unsafe and just fork out £100 when an MoT is £55.

Pip

As already mentioned having an MOT does not mean the car is safe to use on the road, and not having an MOT does not mean the car is unsafe to use on the road.

If you have a defective vehicle you will be done with the vehicle defects regardless if you have an MOT or not.

So if you drive a car which is unsafe you will be charged with that instead of no MOT.

[sparky007]

hi,sorry to resurrect an old thread but while googling this subject I came across this ,are they just plain wrong or have the rules changed

https://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/van-insura...

[TwigtheWonderkid]

sparky007 said:

hi,sorry to resurrect an old thread but while googling this subject I came across this ,are they just plain wrong or have the rules changed

https://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/van-insura...

It's total bks, and Direct Line should really be hauled over the coals for putting out such rubbish.

[Bigends]

Pip1968 said:

agtlaw said:

Google is wrong.

Non-endorsable £100 fixed penalty.

Presumably that would change if the car was found to be unsafe and a likely cause or contribution to the accident ie x4 bald tyres, no brake pads/ corroded discs - ? Obviously I have had to give examples of things apparent after a smash up when you could probably otherwise add no functioning brake lights/indicators/headlights.

Seems a bit mad that drive at 88mph on the mtorway and you get 3 points and £100 thrown at you but drive a car which may be unsafe and just fork out £100 when an MoT is £55.

Pip

£100 fixed penalty for an expired MOT - not for the vehicle being in an unroadworthy / dangerous condition. The driver would be processed for the defective tyres, lights etc separeately plus no MOT certificate in force

[98elise]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

sparky007 said:

hi,sorry to resurrect an old thread but while googling this subject I came across this ,are they just plain wrong or have the rules changed

https://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/van-insura...

It's total bks, and Direct Line should really be hauled over the coals for putting out such rubbish.

Surely it's up to Direct Line?

If they have a condition in their insurance that says the car has to have an MOT for the insurance to be valid, then that's what's required. Insurance terms and conditions are whatever you sign up to with the insurer.

[Aretnap]

98elise said:

Surely it's up to Direct Line?

If they have a condition in their insurance that says the car has to have an MOT for the insurance to be valid, then that's what's required. Insurance terms and conditions are whatever you sign up to with the insurer.

That principle went out of the window round about the same time as the dinosaurs. Insurance terms and conditions cannot override consumer legislation.

The basic rule is that if you breach the terms of your insurance contract, the insurer can only use this as grounds to refuse to pay a claim if the claim was related to the breach. See the Insurance Act 2015 (although the same principle was part of industry regulations and codes of practice well before then).

So if your life insurance had a clause which said that you were not allowed to go sky-diving, the insurer could refuse to pay out if you died in a sky-diving accident. However they couldn't refuse to pay if you died of cancer just because they found out that you'd been sky-diving at some point in the past.

Or if your car insurance required your car to be roadworthy and you had no working headlights your insurer could refuse to pay for an accident where you drove into something in the dark, but not for an accident that happened in daylight.

In the case of no MOT, the lack of a piece of paper cannot cause an accident. So even if Direct Line did say that you had to have an MOT for your insurance to be valid, there would still be no circumstances where they could refuse to pay a claim purely because you didn't have one. I suppose they might be able to refuse a claim if your car had a defect which would have been picked up by an MOT, and that defect was a significant factor in causing the accident.

As it happens, as far as I can see Direct Line, in common with most insurers have no requirement for the car to have an MOT; they merely require it to be roadworthy ( Page 28). So the bloke who spent 5 minutes cobbling together that bit of search engine optimisation text didn't even bother to read the terms and conditions of the insurer he was writing for. Which is fairly typical TBH.

Edited by Aretnap on Saturday 15th August 14:44

Edited by Aretnap on Saturday 15th August 14:45

[Eyersey1234]

If A MOT was required for insurance to be valid that would mean you couldn't drive an untested car to a pre arranged MOT.

[zygalski]

98elise said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

sparky007 said:

hi,sorry to resurrect an old thread but while googling this subject I came across this ,are they just plain wrong or have the rules changed

https://www.directlineforbusiness.co.uk/van-insura...

It's total bks, and Direct Line should really be hauled over the coals for putting out such rubbish.

Surely it's up to Direct Line?

If they have a condition in their insurance that says the car has to have an MOT for the insurance to be valid, then that's what's required. Insurance terms and conditions are whatever you sign up to with the insurer.

The company I'm a claims handler for doesn't worry about no MOT. We advise the client it's between them & the police if they get caught.
However, if they're involved in a an accident and make a claim, the lack of MOT would mean the car is devalued and what might have been deemed repairable may now be a total loss, and any total loss payout would be less than had the car had a valid MOT.

[imagineifyeswill]

That Direct Line article is not about cars but about vans, it doesnt mention anything about van sizes or weights, if they are classing all vans regardless of size as commercial vehicles then that article will be correct.

Whilst the fine for no MOT on a car is £100 it is a £1000 for a HGV, the fine for an illegal tyre on an HGV is up to £2500.

To get back to the original subject a lot of people dont realise an MOT is a minimum safety standard I.E. one step away from the scrapyard. I was an MOT tester for many years and there is very little in MOT regulations that is 100% black and white and most of it is down to the testers personal opinion. One tester could test a vehicle and fail it for ten faults, whilst another tester could pass the same car with ten advisories, theyve both seen the same ten faults but just there opinion on the seriousness of the faults differ. If the same vehicle with both pass and fail certificates was taken to DVSA i wouldnt put any bets on the guy who passed it being recommended for retraining rather than the one who failed it.

Many mechanics including MOT testers who deal solely with cars would be quite surprised at the amount of leeway DVSA examiners will give when testing heavy commercial vehicles