Driving without insurance (unknowingly)

[Ashley1]

HI. I was recently stopped by the police and told that my car was insured. This came as a complete surprise to me as 2 months earlier when the policy expired I remember calling the insurance company for a renewal. I explained this to the police and was given the standard 7 days to produce my insurance documents.
However when I reached home and had a look for them I realised I didn't have any. So I immediately got onto the phone to the insurance company, who denied any knowledge of the renewal and basically told me the car was insured.
The thing is because I am not the policy holder, (my dad is), neither one of us checked to see if the documents had arrived, because he was in hospital for a few weeks just after the renewal (mid - october).
Anyway I immediately insured the car, but as a result was driving an insured vehicle when I was stopped. What sort of penalty am I expecting to get for this?

[Ethel]

6 - 8 penalty points and a means tested fine, maximum �5000.

[Skyline D]

I presume that virtually every reference to "insured" in that question should actually read "uninsured", otherwise it makes no sense?

Even if you had renewed it incidentally if you are driving "your" car as main driver but insuring it under your father's name to save money you are also committing the offence of "fronting".

[gina32]

http://www.drivingban.co.uk/drivingban/driving withoutinsurance.htm

[woozer]

And who is the registered owner and keeper of the vehicle ?- if it is you then the policy should be in your name. If it is your Dad then he has technically committed and offence by allowing you to drive an uninsured vehicle. Then there are the issues mentioned above re fronting

[Ashley1]

The policy is in my dad's name simply because he is the one that uses the car the most. I use it o the weekends. So does that still fall into the fronting offence?

[dot.hawkes]

yes, and insurers always send plenty of reminders and so you have no excuse really

[jno]

they don't always, Dot - they forgot with me last year, and it was only by chance I remembered just before it was due to be renewed. I gave them an earful over the phone. It does happen, alackaday.

[Ashley1]

well they didnt actually sent us any reminders. and like i said the problem wasn't that i didnt reinsure the car. I did phone them to reinsure it. But it didn't go through. Any further correspondance would have been on my dad's name who was in hospital during that period. So basically I didn't get it.

[factor-fiction]

Hope your dad is better.
It's a driver's responsibility to check he is covered on insurance before driving.
Did you make a renewal payment? How? If you hadn't paid for the renewal you should have realised it may not have gone through.
Anyway, if the insurance was in your dad's name I am surprised they dealt with a call from you unless you were pretending to be him.

[woozer]

At the end of the day it is the responsibility of the owner of the vehicle to ensure it is insured. Insurers very very rarely "forget" to send out renewal notices, they do occasionally go astray in the post but I would emphasise it is the owner/driver of the car who is responsible to ensure there is insurance in place and that a method of payment has been agreed with the insurer - you are still fudging the answer to "who is the legal owner of the car " who uses it most and why is of interest but not the answer to the question ! If you own the car you may still not have valid insurance if you are relying on a policy in your fathers name.