Renewing bike insurance with ongoing claim

growse

growse

growse

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
7,139
Location
Ironing
I was knocked off about a month back, I was slowly filtering down the right hand side of some stationary traffic when a car turning right from a minor road on the left pulled out and into the side of me. In theory, this is fairly cut and dry, but the drivers insurers have a policy of disputing liability in all cases where there is filtering. The repairers are repairing my bike under my insurance while it's being argued about, and the lawyers and lawyering.

My insurance is up for renewal on the 21st, and my insurers have quoted £9,100 to renew it. I'm somewhat miffed, as even looking around comparison websites, no-one wants to quote while there's an ongoing claim.

Given how wonderfully slow legal processes take, what's my best option for getting insurance? Are there any specialists out there who deal with this sort of thing?
 
Hire bike is fully covered for by whoever's paying for it (third party in this case). I'll have my bike back hopefully within a week, and then I've got to figure out how to insure it. Also, getting my bike back doesn't mean the claim is resolved :(
 
Flack88 said:
Thats mental, when I had my major car crash in 2010 it was ongoing for several months. Then took over 2 1/2 years to get my compensation.
Click to expand...

This. When the legal teams get going, there's not telling how long this could go on for, so it's looking like I can't get insurance until it's all resolved. In that case, I might as well just sell up and use the money for something I can actually get some value out of.
 
It was my commuting method, so now I've got to pay £16 a day on the train. :(

And I can't even recoup that cost from the claim.
 
MowyTone said:
I'm surprised they go that mad on quotes as even if the blame is laid on you your premiums won't be anything like that high. I don't see why you couldn't get the £16 a day back as loss of earnings due to their actions?
Click to expand...

I'd only be able to claim money back for having to make alternative arrangements while my bike is being repaired. Once I get bike back, as far as they're concerned, there's no more liability for day-to-day costs. It doesn't matter if I can't insure it, because that's a future problem. Otherwise in any non-fault accident, you could claim for 'future cost of higher premiums'.

I'm going to try and get quotes with the bike as completely stock (I feel the crash bungs / heated grips / exhaust end which declared as 'mods' are significantly pushing the price up) and see where that gets me after some arguing. At the moment, I'd be happy to get it below £1000.
 
kitfit1 said:
Glad that you managed to get the quote lower. But i do have to say something about how you said the accident happened. As the car was coming from your left to turn right, clearly this wasn't a dual carriageway. If it wasn't a dual carriageway, then legally you were not filtering, you were overtaking. So how come you didn't see the car pulling out ? because to be able to pull out, the cars you were overtaking must have stopped to allow the car to pull out ? To me it is fairly "cut and dry", you were at fault for overtaking a row of cars that had stopped to allow another car out to turn right. I take it the police were not involved ? Because had they been, i think you would be looking at due care and attention at least, possibly dangerous driving.
Click to expand...

So by that logic, it's impossible to filter on a non-dual carriageway, because it's always overtaking?

The cars hadn't stopped to let someone out, they had stopped because the traffic was very heavy. For whatever reason, the gap was quite hard to see. However, what I would have expected from the driver is to 'nose out', effectively driving as far as they safely could and then proceeding under extreme caution. I would have seen the nose of the car, stopped and they would have come out no problem. I should have seen the gap earlier, but for various reasons it was quite tricky to do.

Police were in attendance, were thinking about charging the other driver with careless driving - not sure where that's got to. Lawyers are still lawyering.
 
kitfit1 said:
It wasn't my logic lol. It was what the police and my mates solicitor told him. What the law calls filtering and what we as bikers call filtering seems to not quite coincide. And yes, if you are "filtering" past a single lane of traffic, the law says you are overtaking. If it was a Motorway, dual carriageway or any dual lane road, then it's filtering that the law recognizes.
Click to expand...

There's no statue that actually defines 'filtering', or expressly makes it legal or otherwise - the highway code simply tells other road users to be aware of motorbikes filtering through traffic.

All passing of traffic is technically 'overtaking', it's just that there's case law precedent which says that if you're on a motorcycle and overtaking at a slow speed past stationary or slow moving traffic, then you're not liable in the event that you crash into someone who does something silly. This isn't the case if you're just regularly overtaking, which is more 'at risk'.

This is why most filtering cases are quite messy, because insurance companies will argue the toss, knowing that each case is usually decided on its individual merits - so many are settled at 50:50 or end up in court. It all comes down to a court deciding whether or not the motorcyclist was behaving sensibly or if there's any negligence. I imagine in your mate's case, there was perhaps evidence to suggest that he was filtering in a way which was argued to be negligent.

In any case, it's frustratingly vague. Personally, I'd like to see better protections for filtering, even if it means dealing with insurance companies becomes faster / easier. If the law was clearer, I'd have my bike back by now :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom