As seen on the Register[1], the government is creating a new offence of "keeping a vehicle without insurance"[2]. How is this going to affect all the enthusiasts of old vehicles who have everything from a Land-Rover that "just needs a new bulkhead fitted" sitting off road, to people with a big pile of spare parts?
[1] [2]Taken from [2] :- 'New proposals, tabled as amendments to the Road Safety Bill in September
2005, will make it an offence to be the keeper of a vehicle, the use of which is not insured. This would apply to vehicles that were not declared as being off the road through a Statutory Off-Road Notification (SORN) and were not insured.....'In other words if you use a SORNed vehicle on the road, you will be prosecuted. Or if you use a vehicle for means other than it is insured for, you will be prosecuted. This means you will be prosecuted for using an uninsured vehicle on the road. I personally have no problems with that. Ever been hit by an uninsured vehicle?
Stew.
Ah - well spotted - panic over. Shame that all the news sites that I visited didn't make it clearer. Must remember to read all the small print and footnotes more carefully next time.
[2]
Driver _and_ Registered person on the V5 if they be different.
All insurance is a con......
I don't have any vehicle insuance for my motorcycles, cars or 4X4's. I put aside a monthly sum that is about a third of the insurance premiums, for 'just in case'.
My mate has a motorcycle that he has had insured over the last ten years, and the money he has spent on insurance could have brought him another bike!
An insurance payout is far from gauranteed, as they have so many loopholes in the contracts.
Sod them all, theiving lowlife bottom feeders.......
If everyone drove defensively, there wouldn't be a need for insurance. the best insurance is you, the driver.......
Brian NZ
And yes, I have been hit by an uninsured driver....I took him to court and got my money. Granted, it took a bit longer than an insurance payout (if they would have payed out...the vehicle didn't have a warrant of fitness, so it was 'unroadworthy' anyway!)
Doesn't cover you from being sued though.
Steve
I've just tried to access this URL and get the following;
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Please upgrade your browser
The GNN website strives to achieve a high standard of accessibility and functionality. Unfortunately your browser version will not be able to get the best out of the site so we would ask that you use the links below to update your browser version. Please note that all downloads are free: Click here to download the latest version of IE
Click here to download the latest version of Netscape"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
They only strive to achieve a high standard of accessibility and functionality if you use either of the above browsers, and if you don't use IE or Netscrape, they do not offer an alternative way in, now that really would achieve accessibility.
Steve.
When it comes to injury, you can't sue down here. We are all covered by the govt. ACC (Accident Compensation Commission) scheme. We all pay into this through our wages and vehicle registration. It's a 'no-fault' scheme.
Brian NZ
The URL works (for me) with Firefox.
Thats one thing i reckon us Aussies should copy from the Kiwis. we are very quickly going down the "sue 'em for all they're worth" type system with 8 million dollar payouts etc. Rather than a compensation scheme with far more realistic outcomes.
Sam.
No, and you havnt either. Vehicles are not insured, drivers are. This is because the vehicle itself is not a risk, the driver behind the wheel is the risk. A stationary vehicle, parked on a driveway involved no risk to third parties at all, why does it have to be insured?
Ensuring that vehicles are insured by linking the insurance register to vehicles will achieve nothing, for two reasons:
Aside from these completely redundant measures which will allow the police to appear to have an effect by blanketing the country with cameras and computers whilst actually reducing the number of officers on the roads actually dealing with crime, i have a further problem with this:
Why the hell should i have to pay two lots of insurance premium beause i happen to own two cars? I can only drive one at any one time, therefore i don't see why the bloody hell i should fork out for two lots of risk of driving. Owning a second car doesn't double the risk of me having an accident, it stays exactly the same as if i was using one car twice as much.
And in case you're wondering, yes i am fully insured to DRIVE the vehicles i do drive.
Alex
I like the system. After being run down by a car (I was on a motorcycle that he 'didn't see') I spent 6 months in hospital having my leg repaired and getting a new hip. I got $10,000 (the max.) for 'pain and suffering' and all my hospital/operations/doctors visits/medication for free. ACC even helped me to retrain as I couldn't do my old job anymore, so I'm finacially better off as well as having a cruisier job!
Yet I see cases in the states where people break an arm and expect millions.....totally unrealistic.
But one thing you shouldn't copy, is our 'Employment Relations Act' which will cripple your unions and drive pay rates down. I saw some Aussie protests on the news the other night, and it remined me of NZ in the eary '90's.......the protests did nothing for us! Don't let Mr Howard lead you down that path if you can help it.
Brian NZ
Works fine for me with: firefox amaya w3m lynx links dillo konqueror
For once, I'm not inclined to blame the government.
"Alex" wrote (SORN) and were
So have you got an Insurance that covers both vehicles? I thought only "Trade" could get those?
And me with Mozzilla 1.7.10 under OS/2 Warp 3.
On or around Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:47:00 +1300, Brian enlightened us thusly:
this is a much more sensible system than we have here... compulsory "third party only" insurance for any vehicle in use or kept on the road, which is bought on the open market so they can, within reason, charge what they want.
e.g.: some months ago a bloke driving a minibus was sufficiently careless or stupid as to be involved in an accident which ended with it upside down, on its roof, and a child dead, ISTR. As a result, all of us who run minibuses on school contracts find it more difficult to get insurance and more expensive. Yet, it transpires, the bloke wasn't correctly licensed nor insured for the use to which the vehicle was put. So the insurers have paid out sod-all, or if they have, will be trying to get it back. But that don't stop us all having to pay extra.
Under your scheme ("your" meaning "NZs"), if you're sufficiently careless as to run into someone else's car and wreck it under conditions which make it clear that it was all or mostly your fault, who pays for the bloke's car? Does the scheme cover that as well, or is it down to you?
Personally, I'd like to see some of the money we get ripped off in taxation for the privilege of running vehicles in this country diverted into a basic, no-frills third party insurance scheme, with realistic payouts (and no spurious claims for whiplash or bruising or other shit) for personal injury and covering the cost of claims to repair cars or other property where or to the extent that it's deemed to be the first party's fault. Anyone wanting theft, fire or comprehensive cover could then go and buy it in the open market as they do now.
I'd even support a modest increase in the road fund licence to make it include such a scheme.
The insurance costs would need looking at - if you remove third party claims from the equation, the risk the insco is taking is smaller and as such the cover shoudl cost less. If this didn't happen, I'd favour the government leaning on the inscos or threatening to.
Silly thing is, they have something a bit like this only much more limited in place anyway - There's something called the Motorists' uninsured loss scheme or somesuch, which is supposed to pay out for third party injuries caused by uninsured drivers. Dunno if it does.
On or around Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:38:24 +0000, Alex enlightened us thusly:
it doesn't, AFAIK. but if it's parked on the road, it does.
That's due to the insurers having to pay out under the "Uninsured drivers scheme" (it's got a proper posh name) that all the insurance companies sign up to. They may well try and recover the money from the driver - probably, though, the bloke would have no money to pay anyway. Whether it's "fair" to effectively get us all to pay a premium into this scheme is open to debate, but what really annoys me is that in such a circumstance as you describe the bloke must have known he was not insured, but he will still be able to get insurance, though probably at a price. Personaly I'd like to see the scheme altered such that anyone who knowingly drives uninsured gets one chance, and if caught a second time would simply not be able to get insurance to drive at all, at least for a substantial time. Now that insurance status come up on a vehicle check, this would not be too onerous to police, and would provide somethig of a deterrent since at present having no insurance is a "big deal" to many, they just pay the fine and carry on.
Richard
On or around Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:22:01 +0000 (UTC), beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:
wouldn't work, though - they'd just carry on driving uninsured anyway; and locking 'em up is not likely to be practical either. Nice idea in theory, though.
I prefer the idea of having the basic third party stuff incorporated into the tax disc (don't they do this in France?). OK, people with no tax and MOT will still exist, but it reduces the chances a bit.
quite like the sound of the NZ scheme, in a way, though - take the personal injury stuff out. I'd want something that covers the innocent parties' property, though, as well - don't know if the NZ lot do that.
It's down to you - the ACC only covers injury and income replacement( you receive 80% of your wage) if you're unable to work due to an accident (of any type, whether it be a car accident or a rugby injury ar anything in between).
Personally I'd like to see compulsory 3rd party insurance - having been hit by an uninsured person recently it's cost me a fair bit of time to help my insurance company pursue matters - until they recover the money I've lost my excess. And the outcome has been the 3rd party being ordered by the courts to repay the money to the insurance company at about 4 quid a week so it'll be about 3 years before it's all recovered and I get my share.
Our totally 'no fault' ACC system works well for injury. But that sort of thing won't work for material damage - if it's a blanket scheme there's no way to penalise those with a bad record by charging them more or a higher excess. Going back a few years we had a centralised blanket
3rd party scheme where the premium was charged as part of your vehicle tax - it was abandoned at the request of the insurance industry for the reasons above.The actual loss figures here for 3rd party damage are fairly high - third party only insurance costs about 35% of the premium for full insurance and they don't give any form of NCB on it - so with my 60% NCB I'm paying only fractionally more than the 3rd party price for full cover. I'd not like to see the 3rd party component administered by the state - they manage to introduce horrendous overheads into everything they do so I expect that it would actually end up costing significantly more if the 3rd party stuff was set up that way.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.