Site accident causes visit to police station.

[epsilonGreedy]

The reality behind my headline is far less interesting than it sounds and involves a miskeyed car registration number combined with an improbable statistical coincidence.

 

Saturday morning was sunny and so Swmbo declared she was going to complete her Times crossword outside on her adopted patio, the patio is actually the garage floor plinth minus the walls. The step up to the floor is high because I need to rise the external ground level with another 200mm of hardcore and the garage footing wall is at dpc. While catching up on US election news I heard a scream outside the static caravan and found Swmbo stemming the flow of blood from a 2" gash on the outside of her ankle. She had somehow sliced open her leg while mounting the footing wall carrying a cup of tea and the newspaper, the bricks are engineering blues with a sharp edge.

 

I examined the wound and claimed since there were no arterial blood spurts I should finish my breakfast, that joke was not appreciated.

 

Six hours later plus 1 x-ray and 4 stitches we headed home from A&E. Half way back I clocked a police patrol vehicle doing a u-turn and following me. Next came blue flashing lights and an indicator, so I took the hint and pulled over. The computer gadetry in the patrol car had flagged my car as having no insurance which was odd because I had renewed in July on one of those 2-cars 2-drivers combined policies for just £400.

 

After much head scratching in my local police station today where the desk officer agreed the insurance docs looked ok his sharp eyed boss noticed I had insured my car with the right number plate except it was year 15 rather than 16. Can you believe it, the vehicle for my registration number minus one year is for the same manufacturer and model number, just a different colour.

[Temp]

When my brother moved house in the 90s the phone number he was given was the same as my work number. The only difference was one digit in the area code and that was only one different. 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Temp

[Ferdinand]

Slightly surprised you didn't get done for that, absent explicit confirmation from the insurance company that it was valid.

[joe90]

8 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

just a different colour.

Many years ago my uncle got pulled  as he had his car sprayed a different colour but didn’t tell DVLA.

[SteamyTea]

9 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Slightly surprised you didn't get done for that, absent explicit confirmation from the insurance company that it was valid.

I once got caught for speeding, the policeman had written down the wrong registration on his paperwork.

When It went to court, where I pointed this out, along with other procedural mistakes, the magistrate said ' we will treat that as correct'.

 

[epsilonGreedy]

11 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Slightly surprised you didn't get done for that, absent explicit confirmation from the insurance company that it was valid.

 

 

The officer at the station desk initially assumed I had turned up to recover my impounded car. At the roadside I must have given a reassuring impression that the uninsured status was due to a fault elsewhere in the system. 

[Onoff]

Just now, epsilonGreedy said:

 

The officer at the station desk initially assumed I had turned up to recover my impounded car. At the roadside I must have given a reassuring impression that the uninsured status was due to a fault elsewhere in the system. 

 

So who made the 15 / 16 cock up you or them?

[epsilonGreedy]

4 hours ago, joe90 said:

Many years ago my uncle got pulled  as he had his car sprayed a different colour but didn’t tell DVLA.

 

 

The first roadside question on Saturday related to a possible recent change of plate involving a personal registration number.

[epsilonGreedy]

2 hours ago, Onoff said:

So who made the 15 / 16 cock up you or them?

 

 

The insurance company said that in the case of an online application I am deemed responsible for the policy details. The details have been corrected online within a few minutes of my phone call.

 

13 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Slightly surprised you didn't get done for that, absent explicit confirmation from the insurance company that it was valid.

 

So was the insurance agent who handled my call. He said that more typically the conversation is acrimonious because the policyholder is facing 6 points and fees to release the vehicle from a police compound.

 

My roadside manner must have made the difference, after 5 hours of sitting in A&E I as frazzled and in no mood for a combative conversation with a traffic cop.

[ProDave]

15 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

After much head scratching in my local police station today where the desk officer agreed the insurance docs looked ok his sharp eyed boss noticed I had insured my car with the right number plate except it was year 15 rather than 16. Can you believe it, the vehicle for my registration number minus one year is for the same manufacturer and model number, just a different colour.

So, technically, YOUR car was NOT insured. You had in fact insured a different car that you did not own.

 

The fact you are not on a charge shows the police have accepted it as a gernuine mistake and providing you now correct the insurance it should be the end of the matter.

 

Why do I get the feeling that had the car been stolen, if the insurance had spotted the mistake, they would refuse to pay out because your car was uninsured?

[PeterW]

23 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Why do I get the feeling that had the car been stolen, if the insurance had spotted the mistake, they would refuse to pay out because your car was uninsured?

They would have not paid out, and it would be an expensive mistake to make ! Worst still would have been an accident as that could have involved a 3rd party. 
 

 

[Onoff]

34 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

The insurance company said that in the case of an online application I am deemed responsible for the policy details. The details have been corrected online within a few minutes of my phone call.

 

"My cock up!" would have sufficed! ? Presumably you entered the reg incorrectly online?

 

Easily done I guess, small screen, slip of the finger. Then I imagine you get sent online insurance docs etc. If you print them I don't suppose you check them for the fine detail like many. Pretty sure getting a posted insurance cert like in the old days was more likely to be checked. I know I'm going to now!

[ToughButterCup]

Have you scrubbed the blood off the bricks yet? 

[epsilonGreedy]

The tale of woe continues...

 

I drove 30 minutes back to the same police station (one downside of living in a self build rural idyll) and log the laptop back into my online policy account.

 

The Aviva Web site responded with:

Quote

 

We’re doing some maintenance at the moment.

This service is unavailable while we make a few improvements. We’re sorry for any inconvenience, but we’ll have things up and running again soon.

 

 

No insurance business knocks its primary policy system offline for hours in the working day to make "a few improvements". This is a catastrophic systems crash and the Aviva employee I spoke to admitted this was an unscheduled outage.

[Temp]

HSBS choose last Friday of the month to do their system update. 

[epsilonGreedy]

26 minutes ago, Temp said:

HSBS choose last Friday of the month to do their system update. 

 

 

The big UK banks are well known for their antiquated IT mess. A big upgrade starting on a Friday might have been their best plan.

 

The current rolling Aviva outage has the hallmark of an escalating crisis. At 15:45 I could log into my online policy but not drill into the detail. One hour later the self admin portal was timing out on internal gateway errors and now the blanket "improvement" message is being shown for home and car insurance self admin and new quotes.

[LSB]

A couple of weeks ago by daughter and her husband got pulled over in her car when her husband was driving.  She was convinced that he was insured, but turns out that I had renewed her insurance and not realised he had to be added.  The police had ANPR that automatically shows the insurance status and they saw that it was insured for 2 women (her and me) and spotted it was a man driving.

Anyway, the police were very nice about it and just said for her to drive home and make sure he was insured before he drove the car again.

 

 

Why were they so nice ?

 

 

She is an intensive car nurse looking after Covid patients in a major hospital in London and he is a surgeon and she is 8 months pregnant.

I think they were worried that if they stressed her out to much she might just give birth there on a roadside.

 

[Big Jimbo]

56 minutes ago, LSB said:

A couple of weeks ago by daughter and her husband got pulled over in her car when her husband was driving.  She was convinced that he was insured, but turns out that I had renewed her insurance and not realised he had to be added.  The police had ANPR that automatically shows the insurance status and they saw that it was insured for 2 women (her and me) and spotted it was a man driving.

Anyway, the police were very nice about it and just said for her to drive home and make sure he was insured before he drove the car again.

 

 

Why were they so nice ?

 

 

She is an intensive car nurse looking after Covid patients in a major hospital in London and he is a surgeon and she is 8 months pregnant.

I think they were worried that if they stressed her out to much she might just give birth there on a roadside.

 

And they used a bit of common sense. Old school copper style. I like that.

[Oz07]

@LSBI got pulled over for the same thing on hard shoulder of M6 when a services was only a couple of mile ahead.

 

I was insured on my own policy to drive vehicles third party but the eagle eyed copper spotted a woman wasn't driving which is why I was pulled over.

 

I was disgusted at the time. Too many lazy police out there looking for the easy nick. They don't even respond to proper crime anymore but have got the time to analyse insurance policies and pull people over