A motorist who feared he would die when his car lay upside down in a beck is now facing a new headache over insurance.
The Press revealed on Saturday how Brian Wharton crashed into the beck near Wilberfoss after swerving to avoid a motorist coming the other way along a single- track road.
He and his partner feared they would drown before they eventually managed to open a back door just enough to squeeze out. The couple have both since suffered from sickness and diarrhoea, possibly caused by accidentally drinking some of the beck water.
Mr Wharton, 57, from an East Yorkshire village, said today his partner’s Ford Focus, worth about £5,000, was written off in the accident, and he contacted his insurance company, Liverpool Victoria, believing it would pay out under his insurance policy.
But then he was told he was not entitled to any payment, because he only had third party, fire and theft cover when driving any vehicle other than his own.
He said he had comprehensive insurance to drive his own car and had believed this would extend to his partner’s vehicle.
He claimed his insurance certificate stated he was entitled to drive another person’s car with their permission, but did not at any stage make clear the cover was only third party.
“If it said elsewhere in small print that my insurance only gave me such cover. It should have made it much clearer,” he said, adding that he wanted to warn other motorists of the potential problems.
A Liverpool Victoria spokeswoman said that if motorists had fully comprehensive insurance on their own car and drove someone’s car, they would be insured on a third party basis only – unless they were a “named” driver. “This means in the event of you being in an accident that is your fault, repairs to your car will not be covered,” she said.
She said such rules were standard across the market, and anyone who regularly drove someone else’s car should add themselves as a named driver to ensure all repairs would be insured in the event of an accident.
Source : York Press
