The lack of necessity to carry some form of photo identity in the UK can cause problems, especially for visitors from another country.
My wife was driving in England when her car was hit by another. No one was injured but my wife’s car was badly damaged. The driver of the other car carried no identification and gave my wife a false name and address. Our insurance company could not trace the driver and the number plates were traced to a car which had been bought at auction under the same alias some weeks before. Our insurance company had to pay for the damage and we had to pay for the excess. The off the record advice given by the insurance company is that if you are going to drive in the UK and someone runs into your car, you should claim that you have a back or neck injury because that way the police have to attend.
gallois wrote:
Our insurance company could not trace the driver and the number plates were traced to a car which had been bought at auction under the same alias some weeks before
Isn’t that simply an unfortunate incident, one in a million kind of incident? I mean, he could also be a bank robber with a stolen car.
gallois wrote:
The driver of the other car carried no identification and gave my wife a false name and address.
I have to admit that in more than 180 countries in the world I had no idea how a proper national ID would look like and therefore in case of an accident it would not help me that the other driver would produce any “document” claiming that it’s her ID. Therefore …
gallois wrote:
if you are going to drive in the UK and someone runs into your car, you should claim that you have a back or neck injury because that way the police have to attend.
… I thought this is the rule not only in the UK but rather in any foreign country: If you have an accident don’t try to settle it without the police (and yes, if you have to clearly communicate that your arms, neck or leg is actually hurting to make the police appear you should do that).
You need the police not only to make sure that the identity of the other driver is clear, but also – and in many countries much more importantly – to give some protection against a local making tremendous claims some days/weeks later
I France you should carry your driving licence with you when driving, just like you should carry your pilot’s licence when flying.
Insurance certificate, must be displayed in the windscreen and the insurance documents, including a pro forma accident form should also be carried in the car. If you have an accident both parties fill in the appropriate form together and sign that they agree to what has been written. If for one reason or another one of the parties is not able to sign, the police will make out the report and will get the appropriate signatures.
Yes, France is bureaucratic, but in this case I quite like that.
Malibuflyer wrote:
thought this is the rule not only in the UK but rather in any foreign country: If you have an accident don’t try to settle it without the police (and yes, if you have to clearly communicate that your arms, neck or leg is actually hurting to make the police appear you should do that). You need the police not only to make sure that the identity of the other driver is clear, but also – and in many countries much more importantly – to give some protection against a local making tremendous claims some days/weeks later
In the US, we don’t generally involve the police in minor, non injury car accidents. It’s up to you, with the choice typically dependent on the level of property damage and the other parties attitude. Not something I’ve ever needed to do – in every such incident I’ve had the other driver has admitted fault to their insurance company and they’ve paid my bill.
If you do want a police report, you may have to wait a significant period. Most people prefer to get on with their day assuming the other party isn’t undocumented. Also, in a relatively minor accident US drivers are expected to get the vehicles out of the flow of traffic immediately, and so there really isn’t a lot for the police to see that you can’t document as well or better with a cell phone camera prior to moving your car.
Silvaire wrote:
In the US, we don’t generally involve the police in minor, non injury car accidents. It’s up to you, with the choice typically dependent on the level of property damage and the other parties attitude.
Same in Germany actually. If there is only “Blechschaden” (“metal damage”) and both parties agree on how the accident happened, it is perfectly acceptable to not involve the policy and simply exchange insurance information.
That is why I wrote “in any foreign country”. Of course I don’t call the police for a minor damage in Germany (which is my home country) if the other driver is friendly and we agree on what has happened.
But in the US I would definitely go for the police in any accident – although I know that US citizens in their country do exactly what I do in mine…
Ordering some drive belts from our usual “cheap but good” supplier yesterday, I noticed the banner on their website:
https://shop.marksman-ind.com/
I wonder what that’s about and whether it is commonplace?
Is it due to the new “B-word” non-tariff trade barriers, or the Wuhan lab virus, or is there more to it than that?
You mean this
I don’t know the reason for that.
There has been a big change in Royal Mail procedures which coincided with brexit but it isn’t EU specific; basically you have to use their absolutely awful (time wasting) Click & Drop system for all packets. There are 3rd party solutions such as ShipTheory but they have their own issues, and for online shops like Magento there is C&D integration.
There has also been a big decrease in reliability of air mail (“small packet”) reliability to the mainland. I don’t know the reason but suspect that a lot of post offices are just throwing UK packets on a pile and leaving them to “de-virus” for a few weeks. They used to take 3-5 days but I have seen delays of weeks, and obviously the customer is p1ssed off. He wanted cheap postage so got airmail… It seems to be country specific; the other day I sent a package to Germany which took the usual few days.
100% loss of airmail packages to China however, going on for months. Only DHL etc works now.
There is a separate issue for EU → UK shipping, discussed around here. That caused many mainland shops to stop selling to the UK. Fairly easy solutions however.
Graham wrote:
There may be a difference between the ‘instructions’ and the law. Unless they’ve actually changed the law, the requirement is simply ‘to notify a constable in writing’. Unless something major has changed, I don’t think they have the right to insist on a particular format or place of submission.
Don’t authorities in the UK (such as the police) have to power to make instructions on how to apply such requirements? In this case instructions on what information should be in the notification and how the notification should be done.
