Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 21 March 2014:
It seems like there’s no end to the way car and van insurance companies will mistreat their customers – but this week’s news stories absolutely take the cake.
This time, it looks like that the insurance market has specifically excluded whole swathes of the car and van driving community all in an effort to provide ‘relief’ to very specific classes of drivers. There are new rules going into effect through an amendment to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that’s designed to help Brits that have done time for their offences and are trying to rebuild their lives that would strip the requirement to disclose their criminal records whilst applying for things like insurance and bank lending, but insurance lobbyists have made sure to have the amendment worded to purposefully exclude drivers with penalty points or licence endorsements.
In other words, you might find it easier to secure commercial van insurance if you’ve been to jail for burglary and paid your debt to society than if you were otherwise responsible but have had more than your fair share of parking or speeding tickets. Does this seem fair to anyone at all? Because it certainly doesn’t seem all that fair to me in the least.
This isn’t just some proposed change, either – it’s going into effect very soon and that means it’s going to impact motorists on the road today. In fact, another story comes to ind that I read this week involving a student that took his mother’s car out to pick up some cigarettes only to end up being involved in an accident on his way home and then fleeing the scene.
The 20 year old, who not only had taken his mum’s car without permission, was also driving without any insurance cover. This is of course why he panicked and left the scene of the road traffic accident. Not that it helped much – he was caught, and now he’s got some 80 hours of community service to fulfill as well as a one-year driving ban. By then the new rules will be in effect and he’ll have a devil of a time getting insurance cover for his own vehicle because these incidents will stay on his criminal record for up to five years. Meanwhile if he had walked to the corner shop for the cigarettes and robbed the place he wouldn’t have nearly the same trouble. Again, this isn’t fair in the least.