If you're buying a car privately, you will want to road test it before handing over your cash. However, will you be insured to do so?
Won't my current insurance policy cover me?
If you have comprehensive cover for an existing car it is possible that the policy contains a clause providing you with cover for any car that doesn't belong to you. However bear in mind that:
- If your cover is third party only or 3FT is is very unlikely you'll have this cover;
- Not every comprehensive policy does, either, and there are often conditions attached;
- If you do have cover it is likely to be third party only;
- It will not cover you after you have bought the car!
What does all this mean?
At best, you may be covered for any third party injuries you caused if you had an accident during the test drive that you were responsible for; but if you damaged the car itself you would probably be personally liable to put it right. At worst, if you didn't check your policy carefully, you could find yourself uninsured, with all the potential consequences that could apply.
If you do have this cover you should take the policy to show to the car owner. If this person allowed you to drive the car and you were in fact uninsured then he or she would probably face a charge of allowing a motor vehicle to be driven without insurance, which carries heavy penalties and which it is extremely different to defend against, since the onus is on the vehicle owner to make absolutely certain that you were insured before letting you take the wheel.
How would I stand insurance-wise after I'd bought the car?
You would no longer be covered by the 'any vehicle not belonging to you' clause because you would now be the owner. If you were to drive the car home you would have to have insurance.
What would happen if I bought a car then drove it home without insurance?
Driving without insurance is a VERY serious matter and the police are red hot on it. They can tell within seconds if a car in uninsured because there are cameras everywhere that read numberplates and check them against a central database automatically. Tens of thousands of vehicles are stopped every year by police officers using this technology.
If you are stopped for driving whilst uninsured there is no use protesting that you have only just bought the car; the police have heard it all before and they won't be impressed. The likelihood is that you would get a huge fine, plus six penalty points on your licence, and the car would be impounded. You would then have to pay at least a three figure sum to get it back and your costs would include buying a special insurance policy. This would not be easy because the vast majority of insurers stipulate that their policies cannot be used for releasing a car from a police pound. You could get more information about getting your car back from this impounded car insurance information site.
OK I'm buying a car - how do I make sure I'm insured?
You can buy a comprehensive short term car insurance policy for just a single day, which gives you ample time to test drive it and then get it home afterwards. Provided that you had the numberplate details of the car you were looking at you could arrange this beforehand, and benefit from comprehensive cover during the test drive, or at a pinch you could apply over your mobile phone after you had bought it, subject to you being absolutely sure that you had your driving licence and credit card details with you.
Cover can be arranged to start immediately and you would be given an email link to the policy details so that you could present them to the police if you were stopped.
Once you had got the car home you could get online and search for a standard yearly policy for it. A good place to look could be this completely unbiased price comparison site.
How do I proceed?
Short term car insurance is extremely affordable and you can buy it for as little as one day, to cover a car that belongs to someone else (provided you have that person't permission to drive it) as well as one that you own yourself. Don't take the risk of potentially awful consequences; click the link now and get quotes, a policy may be much cheaper than you expect.