Diary Of An ADI

This article on myfinances.co.uk says that uninsured driving adds £30 per year to every car insurance policy.

The research was done by moneysupermarket.com (so it’s more of a survey than “research”). Apparently, 17% of motorists has driven a car they aren’t insured to drive. 7% say they’ve driven their own car uninsured, and another 7% said they’ve driven someone else’s uninsured.

A quarter of these reckoned they didn’t know it was illegal.

A third reckoned they did it because they were “between policies”.

Thinking of that last topic I posted, I’m reminded of that American spoof story which claimed that an IQ test was going to be required to get a driver’s licence.

If we introduced one here, we’d take at least 4.5 million cars off the roads.

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

The Thurrock Gazette reports that a driving examiner and an instructor have been jailed for a bribes scam they were involved in.

Salima Rashid (instructor) took money off pupils she’d taught, and split the money between two examiners (Nick Madigan is named as one). Rashid tried to lie her way out of it, but was found guilty and jailed for two years. Madigan pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced next month.

A second examiner, Kulwinder Mann, has also been found guilty but will be sentenced later as he is apparently “unwell”.

Rashid’s pupils – all of them appear to be non-UK nationals – paid up to £1,000 a time. One of them passed, in spite of a near miss with a car during her test. Another pupil was failed by Madigan, then offered a pass in return for a sum of cash! This occurred at the Barking test centre.

I wonder if any licences have been revoked?

This has to be one of the biggest non-stories you could ever have.

The AA has done a poll. Now, it isn’t clear if it is the AA who have concluded this, or if it is the media trying to make a boring story slightly less boring, but…

Parents are passing on road rage habits to their learner-driver children…

What misleading clap-trap! How do they pass it on? In their wills? Do they “bequeath” the skill to their offspring?

Everyone knows that children pick up habits and behaviours from people around them as they grow up – parents, friends, TV. Everything. Not just road rage, and not just when it comes to driving.

EVERYTHING.

And the behaviour is cultural. You go near one of those estates where they use the garden instead of a dustbin and you’ll see ten times more of this behaviour. Conversely, stop out side a school and you’ll see a dramatic increase in the CAUSE of such behaviour as diminuitive women in illegally- (and badly) parked BMW X3s and X5s try to mow down other people’s kids once they’ve picked up their own.

And another thing: why this crusade against road rage, as if someone who gets annoyed at morons trying to kill them is a child molester or something?

It is perfectly natural to get angry with people who cut you up and force you to brake or swerve.

The campaign should be against the morons – not against the rest of us.

EDIT 14/3/2011: Just adding this next bit later in the day – the same story is covered in Autoblog, but with considerably more commonsense and less childish, sensationalist editorial spin.

Speeding, tailgating, driving one-handed and a tendency for road rage are among the top 10 faults many learners copy from their mother and father.

The original AA survery is still superficial – but at least it isn’t saying what the original source suggested it was.

Hey. It’s started again.

Remember all that stuff about “making the driving test harder” a few years ago? It was media mis-information and hyping surrounding an ongoing consultation and various reports that had been issued.

This article suggests that history is repeating itself.

MPs are once again calling on the on the Government to modernise the driving test to make it more rigorous so that it properly prepares drivers for real world motoring …

The call comes from the cross party transport select committee as part of a report on the rising cost of motor insurance, especially for younger and newly qualified drivers…

…[ideas] include a minimum one-year learning period for drivers where newly-qualified drivers aged under 20 would be limited to carrying no more than one passenger aged under 20 during the first six months of driving…

…a two-tier licensing system in which novice drivers would hold a restricted licence for two years, at the end of which time there would be a further test…

…changing the driving test, to make it more difficult and more suitable for the skills new drivers need once they pass the test. It could also incorporate a section where candidates navigate their own route during the test…

Other ideas include pre-driving tests for 14 to 16 year olds, so that they are aware of the sort of pressures they will be under and the sort of skills they are going to need before they start taking their driving tests plus looking at ways of training learner drivers in motorway driving and other aspects of “independent driving”. The department also suggest replacing the “unsuccessful” Pass Plus advanced driving course for novice drivers with other means of enabling such drivers to show insurers that they are safe.

The most significant part is this bit, though:

However many of these suggestions were under consideration when the Labour Government produced a report on novice drivers in 2007.

Yes. And any ideas for change were opposed by this Mickey Mouse government we have now.

Just remember that any changes are years – possibly decades – away. This government will be long gone by the time anything significant gets through.

An article in the Telegraph suggests that the skyrocketing rate of claims for personal injury following car accidents is sending normal insurance premiums sky high, too.

Despite the number of accidents falling and car safety improving there has been a dramatic increase in motorists and passengers saying they have been hurt and seeking compensation.

Yep. They’re called “liars” and “frauds”.

I warn all my pupils that if they have an accident or bump of any sort – no matter how slight – they must inform their insurance company. This isn’t to make a fraudulent claim – it is to protect themselves against the inevitable fraudulent claim that the other party will direct at them.

Over the years I have been driving, I’ve had it happen to me twice. The first one was 20-odd years ago when I nudged a car which stopped in front of me very suddenly in slow-moving traffic. We both stopped to check and agreed there was no damage. But later that night he came round with his dad, who said “I think you were mistaken – there was more damage than you first thought”. He then proceeded to show me a rusty crumpled boot floor. I said “How do you sleep at night? You know that wasn’t caused today”. The insurance company agreed and threw out his claim, saying it was “old damage”. I remember the guy: Mr Wilson – professional (but not very good) insurance fraudster and all round scumbag.

Another one occurred at a roundabout. It was two lanes wide on the entry, but the car to my right pulled across two lanes and scraped down my offside. We exchanged details, and when I got home I repaired all the “damage” on my car by rubbing my front wing with Brasso. A few weeks later I got a claim through for over £600. The insurance company threw that one out as well – it was HIS fault not mine.

More recently, one of my pupils was involved in an accident and she called me for advice. What had happened was that she was driving along at less than 30mph and a car pulled out in front of her, clipping her front offside wing and smashing her light. I asked her specifically if the impact was on the side of her car or the front, and she confirmed it was the side. I stressed that she must put in a claim immediately, because the other driver will do and it will be exaggerated.

It got complicated, because her dad didn’t want to alert the insurance company because “she was a new driver and they will put her premiums up, and they always decide against the new driver.” I told her this was all nonsense, but her dad was calling the shots.

I spoke with her again a few weeks later and she said “well, the other driver hasn’t done anything so I’m just hoping he will forget about it”.

I said “Lyn, what registration year was the other car?” She replied “2007”.

I said “Look, there is no way he is not going to put a claim in with a car that is still less than three years old. And it will be hugely exaggerated.”

I got a call a few days later. She said “The bastard has put a claim in and he is saying that he was stationary and I drove into HIM”.

The last I heard the insurance company was disputing his claim because “the damage didn’t match his story”.

However, a lot of these scumbags get away with it – especially when it involves personal injury, and doubly so if it involves children.

A couple of years ago I was rear-ended on a lesson by an old guy in a Mercedes (it wasn’t hard). I said to my pupil a few days later, after ascertaining he was OK: “If you get a call from a personal injury company, you ARE NOT injured! Are we clear about that?”

Ironically, the personal injury claims are often triggered by the insurance companies themselves.