Car Accident Declaration

[alan30]

My daughter had an accident while on holiday in USA last year. Her fault and hire car was written off. Insurance was through hire company and all settled with no problem.

Does she need to declare this accident when renewing her UK car insurance?

[iBrowse]

i wouldnt bother......i am probly 'legally' wrong, but i wouldnt bother......

[chas2008]

im with iBrowse, theres no shared insurance data base between the UK & USA that im aware of.

[wolf63]

Although I agree with the answers above if there were to be an accident in the UK and the insurance company were to find out it would cause many problems.

[mrs_overall]

Some years ago Mr O had a prang in Tenerife in a hire car. He came clean to his insurance company but they said they didn't need to know about it.

[jno]

I suppose they wouldn't technically need to know if it was all satisfactorily settled between two other insurance companies overseas. On the other hand they might like to know if your daughter is a maniac who crashes cars all round the world. So if she did make a claim for something at any stage, and the company found out about her shady past, they could refuse to pay out on the grounds that she hadn't given them all the material facts.

But like chas says, this is in practice pretty unlikely to happen unless perhaps the insurance companies at home and abroad are in some way related?

[chas2008]

not 100% certain but i would of thought if you had an accident in a hire car in this country it wouldnt show up against your name as you were driving on there insurance

[gouldc]

You shouldn't need to disclose it - without knowing the incident circumstances, it's going to be accepted that driving abroad is an increased risk as the controls for the vehicle ar eon the other side of the vehicle, and you would be driving on the other side of the road, so the potential for mishap is increased.

Equally, UK and USA database (assuming they exist over there at all as a national entity rather than state by state) are not shared.

Interestingly, we don't need to know about claims made on mopeds - don't know why, but I'm in fraud, not underwriting.

A claim wouldn't be affected if the insurer somehow found out about this accident, and they would only find out if you r daughter told them

[alan30]

Many thanks for all the answers