Almost a quarter of UK motorists have taken the cost of repairing a car following an accident in which it was their fault, recent research has found.
In a poll of 2,182 motorists 22 percent said they had paid a driver off after a crash because they considered their excess too high to warrant involving the insurer, and a further 54 percent did not want to see their premiums increase.
It’s hard to blame people for this either; spend ten minutes on moneysupermarket.com and you’ll realise just how expensive insurance is at the moment, and paying somebody’s bodyshop bill will often save you money in the long run, especially when you consider that a claim on your insurance could affect your premiums for years.
2% of the drivers questioned slipped a little cash to the victim in an incident in order to cover the fact that they were driving without insurance and they didn’t want to get in trouble, which is risky. Not only is it illegal to do so, given the situation (where you are responsible for an accident), the likelihood of that person cutting you a little slack is probably quite low. A further 11% didn’t want to lose their no claims, which ties in with increasing premiums – a good no-claims discount can make all the difference to your premium and once more, it is understandable that people wouldn’t want to lose it. Interestingly, 42% of those questioned said that it was something that they would consider doing if they were ever in the situation.
What’s even more interesting is how people try to avoid responsibility: 4% of people admitted to not stopping or reporting it – essentially a hit and run, and 19 percent of people admitted to lying in order to try and shift the blame on to the other driver. Obviously this is really risky, as if the case goes to court and you’re found to be lying you can end up in some really serious trouble – there are all kinds of horror stories about accident claims, ranging from exaggerating speeds to faking injuries, all the way up to claiming there were more people in the car than there actually were! It’s things like this I really have a problem with – people capitalising on what is already an awkward and hugely unfortunate situation, pretending to be injured or hurt for personal gain. Not only is this hugely unfair for the other person involved, but every exaggerated on unnecessary claim serves to do nothing more than drive up other people’s premiums – and considering how expensive insurance is nowadays, that’s hardly fair.