Unfortunately, driving without insurance is an absolute offence, i.e. you either had insurance or you didn't (no grey area). Even if you have mitigating circumstances, which it seems you do, the unfortunate fact is that he drove without insurance, full stop. I'm sorry I know that's not what you want to hear, but this is sadly how the law views it. The maximum penalty for driving without insurance is 6–8 penalty points plus a fine, although in certain circumstances, an instant ban will be imposed. The fine, which is means tested, can be up to £5,000. If your brother can demonstrate to the court's satisfaction that he genuinely believed he was insured (in most cases this means either the insurance company or the main driver cancelled/took you off the policy without telling you, so you were misled and had absolutely no reason to believe that you were uninsured), then the court may, at its discretion, give him less points and a much smaller (or no) fine. Each case is different. If the insurance company actually told your mum that your brother was insured, that is reason enough to believe that he was insured, and it ought to qualify as a mitigating circumstance. Hopefully the court will have some understanding. Whatever happens, you will have to prove beyond any doubt that your brother had every reason to believe he was insured. You mention your mum phoned the company and they told her that he was insured - if you can get a recording of that phone call, you can use that in court to prove that your brother did genuinely believe he was insured. BUT the prosecution will probably argue that due to the complications with the company, there was clearly some doubt as to whether or not your brother was insured, and he should have waited until everything was totally cleared up and he got a valid certificate before getting behind the wheel, rather than taking any risks. Not my opinion, just what they may try to say in court.

As Gyzmo put it very succinctly, those are the only two possible ways when the person behind is NOT at fault in a rear-hit accident. If neither of those occured, then you are at fault, sorry. Rear-hit accidents are usually cut-and-dry cases and 99% of the time it is the fault of the person behind. Assuming the car in front simply braked in order to turn off (even if she was in the wrong lane), and you hit her, I'm afraid it implies that you were driving too close behind her. If you had been a reasonable distance behind her, you would have had the time and distance to stop without hitting her. Sorry it's not what you want to hear. I appreciate she was in the wrong lane, and that she may have been uninsured: that is frustrating and totally unacceptable, and I sympathise with you. However, if you had been far enough behind her you would have been able to stop in time and the accident would not have happened.

If you are obliged to involve your insurance company despite the minorness of the incident, then unfortunately that is what you should do. But if the other guy voluntarily involves insurance he is an idiot, because nowadays non-fault claims (like what it would be for him) also increase your premium, so he will be out of pocket, which seems pointless and avoidable from his perspective. If you settle it privately, he can (within reason) go to any number plate fixing place he wants even if it is not the cheapest, and you have to pay what he quotes. You could choose to challenge his quote and go looking yourself, but then the risk is he may threaten to go through insurance (or just go straight through insurance without telling you, which would end you up in big trouble if you have not told your insurer about the incident). The one advantage of going through insurance is that if you feel his (or rather his insurer's) quote for the repair to the number plate is excessive, you can go looking for quotes yourself and if you find a cheaper one, you can let them know and the quote for repair may go down. Personally I think all minor cases like these would be much better sorted out privately, to save time and money for both us and the insurance companies, but sadly the insurers make these rules and you are obliged to obey them when you buy their policy; and if, in any possible way, it is discovered at a later date that you didn't tell your company about this tiny incident, you may have your policy invalidated and will find it difficult and expensive to be accepted for new policies because you will have to declare on all the forms that you have had your policy invalidated in the past, etc.

Mortgagebroker: how you you feel if it was you who was hit by a maniac and then upon renewal were accused of being a worse driver and forced to pay a higher premium through no fault of your own. While I understand your analogy of bricklayers, it is unacceptable because in fairness the bricklayers who did not have an accident fully deserve to have a decrease in premium because they have not had an accident. What someone else of a similar/same profession does with their car is frankly irrelevant and does not affect your own driving one bit. Tarring people of the same occupation/sex/age with the same brush is completely unacceptable and uncondoneable. Fact: there are good and bad drivers of all ages, sexes and professions. This is a case of using random statistics which prove nothing to punish innocent drivers with the sole aim of taking money off them. Typical insurance companies. While statistics are often a good indication, they are NEVER a guarantee that one driver of a certain age/profession will be good/bad at driving. That is impossible to tell because all people are different and independent of each other. Also I find the statistics relating to the "low" profits of insurance companies impossible to believe. The vast majority of people do not claim in any given year, and many people never claim full stop. Yet this overwhelming majority of people is paying hundreds of pounds each per year to the insurers. They must have absolutely bucketloads of cash. I appreciate that there are some big payouts with major accidents etc. but this is completely eclipsed by the tens of millions of people who pay large amounts of money each year but never ever claim. Oh, and Lemon Twist: sadly she was discreet and chose not to say. I just hope it wasn't my insurer in case it happens to me! We cannot predict when some moron is going to crash into our stationery cars so it is impossible to guarantee avoiding this situation. Therefore it is unfair that our premiums are increased for this.

Thanks everyone - this is what we thought. Won't let the landlady get away with this!

No worries Mr. Shed! I appreciate all the suggestions given and it is not me directly involved, I'm just trying to help out a good friend who I don't like to see being treated unfairly like this. The contracts are definitely independent; every man for himself so-to-speak. There is no 'joint' contract involving a group of them. The fixed term contract ends on 30th June.

Moderator please delete. Posted twice by accident! Sorry

Every tenant has an identical but individual and personally named contract which they have signed independently of each other. The contract states that for each tenant, the rent is for the one bedroom plus the shared rooms, i.e. living room, kitchen, bathroom and hallway areas. There is no mention that the rent price is divided for the property as a whole: only for each tenant to pay individually. Hope that info helps people to provide more details as to whether what this landlady is doing is permissible or not. Thanks.

The form my uni gives is a Certificate of Attendance - not a 'council tax exemption form', but when I send it to the council, they recognise this Certificate of Attendance as proof of being a student and give you the tax exemption no problem. I have done this for the last two years without the slightest of problems. It sounds like your uni are being bang out of order. Try asking for a certificate of attendance, rather than a council tax exemption form. You may choose to ask for a certificate of attendance for a number of reasons: (i) proof that you are a student, to get exemption from council tax; (ii) to send to other institutions that you are applying to if they so require; (iii) to give to your employer to prove you are a student and therefore exempt from income tax; (iv) if you are self-employed: to give to the tax man to prove you are a student and therefore entitled to an income tax refund; (v) any other reason - if you want one, they are obliged to print one out for you. However, I don't know how much this differs being a part-time rather than full-time student. If you still have difficulties, your personal tutor (if you uni has such a scheme) may prove a good help as they are supposed to advise you on all problems and queries, not just academic ones. Don't give up - it sounds like the jobsworths in the office for printing certificates/forms at your uni are being evasive and trying their utmost to inconvenience you but you will get there in the end if you truly deserve an exemption according to the rules.

I am writing this on behalf of some friends because they're being ripped off but they seem resigned to it and reluctant to do anything about it but I'm convinced their landlady is acting wrongly and justice should be served: 4 university students were living in a 4-bedroom rented house. The rent for the house was split between the 4 of them. A few weeks ago, one of the housemates had to leave due to personal circumstances. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the other 3 people living there. The landlady has been unable to find a replacement tenant for the person who has left and so she is now splitting the rent into 3 so that she can get the same amout of money. Therefore the 3 remaining tenants now have to pay a substantially increased rent through no fault of their own. Surely this is wrong? It is up to the landlady to find a replacement tenant and it is her problem if she can't? I understand that she would be losing money due to the other person leaving but that has nothing to do with the other 3 tenants who have done nothing wrong whatsoever. It is a 4-bedroom house and the 3 remaining tenants are sharing the cost for this empty 4th room, which the landlady has locked and so they can't even use it even if they wanted to. There is nothing on their contract which says that they must pay increased rent if one of them leaves early. It is entirely up to the landlady to come to an agreement with the person who left and to find a new tenant. Is this situation out of order, is the landlady acting illegally? Or is it just a fact of life that if someone you live with decides to leave, you have to cover their rent if no-one else moves in?

My fiancée has received a job offer in Canada that is too good to refuse. It is a two-year posting, then probably back to the UK afterwards. I am wondering if we will be able to transfer our no-claims history abroad? Do car insurers generally accept no-claims from foreign countries as legitimate or not? Otherwise it would seem like a waste of time and money doing all this safe driving, building up a no-claims and then having it mean nothing when we're abroad. Canada is a Commonwealth country with, in my experience, mainly similar rules and a similar standard of driving to the UK, so I'm crossing my fingers we might be OK. Also, if we are unable to transfer the NCB abroad, will we be allowed to "resume" it when we get back, i.e. the same amount of years as we had before we left the UK? Or will we have to start all over again? Or does that depend on how long we are away? I have heard of cases where people have stopped driving for 10 years then decided to start again and have not be allowed to use their old NCB, but 2 years isn't that long I don't think.

Reply to your question 1: I don't think so. It is your policy, so if you have a crash in your car that is under your policy, it will be your insurance that is affected, not your father's. Assuming he drives another car under his own policy, he would have no need to tell his insurer if you have an accident in your car. It would have nothing to do with him and would not affect his own insurance. But: if you add your father to your car's insurance, and then he has an accident in your car, it will affect your insurance, because it is your policy even if it is not you driving - it will be you making the claim in the event of an accident, and you will have to declare in future that you have made a claim, even if you were not driving when the accident happened. Even if you have an additional driver on your insurance who goes and writes it off, it will be your premium that suffers because the additional driver was driving under your policy. (It will also affect the other driver when renewing themselves because they will have to declare an accident). Likewise, to continue the example, if a new driver who has not yet got their own car, is added to their parents' policy for their parents' car and then has an accident in that car, with absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the parents, the parents' premium will still suffer.

Wow guys thanks a bunch for all your responses, some really useful advice in there. I will definitely contact the council highways department, and then the police if nothing happens. As for the cones: they are the standard orange and white cones that you see everywhere. He uses two to reserve "his" space: one has nothing on it and the other one has a scribbled note selotaped to it that says "delivery expected". This is a lie, intended to make people unfamiliar with the road not park there, and this note has been there for as long as I've lived here. Anyway, even if there was a delivery expected, he is still not allowed to stick cones out, he is not the police and he doesn't own the road. Just a ploy to make people feel guilty about removing the cones, and I'm afraid to say it works.

Yes, it is a public highway. So am I, as an ordinary citizen with no extra powers (council, police etc.), allowed to remove the cones to allow myself or others to park, or should I not "take the law into my own hands" and contact the local police instead as the cones are his property? Oh and I am a student myself lol:rolleyes: Knowing what this guy is like, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to sue anyone who removed the cones, claiming that they are tampering with his property. At the very least, he would get aggressive and have a tantrum. Surely the police are employed to deal with neighbourhood situations like this so that us normal people don't have to take risks in confronting unpleasant people. This is why we are a little reluctant because although what he is doing is very wrong (at least morally, don't know about legally), we don't want do retort by doing wrong ourselves by moving his property.

I live in a narrow urban residential street where parking is at a premium and it is a first come first served basis. The road is completely unrestriced and free in terms of parking rules. Most people just accept when there is no space and they go and park in a nearby street, no problem. However there is one neighbour who, whenever he goes off somewhere in his car, leaves two traffic cones in the space where he was parked. He has no permit whatsoever and in everyone else's opinion he has no more right to park in that piece of space than any other car owner on the planet, as the street is completely unrestricted as I said. He may own a house on the street but that doesn't mean he owns a section of space on a public road too! Is what he is doing illegal? Are we, his neighbours and fellow car owners, allowed to remove the cones, put them in his front yard, and park our own cars there? If he keeps putting the cones there and not "letting" anyone else park there, can he be prosecuted? We are a tight-knit street where pretty much everyone knows everyone and so we don't want this problem of selfishness by one new young businessman with his flashy car to spill over into a neighbourhood dispute, I'm sure you understand. But it is just very annoying when you return home in your car to find there are no spaces left except for one that is covered up by cones by a neighbour who believes he 'owns' that space and no-one else can park there! Any advice on this would be hugely appreciated, thank you, happy new year to all.

I wish you the best of luck with you claim. Personally I think it's disgraceful that insurance companies now treat every customer as a 'suspect' and assume that they are guilty until proven innocent. I know it is in all our interests to stop fraudulent claims, but it is a regular occurrence that genuine truthful claims are rejected and the policyholder loses everything because the company wrongly thinks they're lying, when in fact they are telling the truth and have done nothing wrong. This is a minority of cases but it does happen and with more serious claims it can ruin lives. Having said that, I do hope your claim is resolved successfully.

I've just been talking to my neighbour and can't believe the nerve of her insurance company after what happened: She was hit head-on by a drunk driver, who was on the wrong side of the road and my neighbour had no chance of getting out of the way as there is a wall on both sides of the road. The drunk driver was arrested, charged and has just been convicted, and has been found by both his and my neighbour's insurance companies as 100% liable for the accident. My neighbour has just renewed her car insurance and her premium is 25% higher than last year. When she asked the company, they said the rise is due to her being 'involved' in that accident. Obviously there was absolutely nothing she could do to avoid that accident; her crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Suffice it to say, she changed companies! What an absolute disgrace! These vermin must be stopped, there must be some law created to stop these disgusting companies doing this to poor, innocent people.

Try this: SAYNOTO0870.COM - Non-Geographical Alternative Telephone Numbers It is a large database of 0870 numbers, and it tells you the proper, normal phone number that you can also use to contact them. It doesn't always work but it's worth a try and will (i) save you money, and (ii) give them less money!

Beware of E&L; they are very dodgy and have a bad reputation and I don't know how they get away with it to be honest. Hopefully they won't get away with it for much longer. Have a look at this thread: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/insurance-assurance-companies/83420-e-l-pet-insurance.html Good luck, I hope you get justice from these dreadful people!

I think it's in principle a good idea. The simple lesson is don't speed and you won't need to think about paying these extra fines. Someone raised a very valid point about someone being pulled over straightaway compared to someone engaging in a long chase - to solve that they should say, the longer the chase is, the more you pay for fuel. If you are flagged over and pull over straightaway, you shouldn't have to pay extra for fuel as the police car has not used any extra fuel. It might be annoying but if you don't speed you have nothing to worry about.

I know road law doesn't agree with me, but I believe there are times when an "incident" really is a complete accident. If something is not an accident, that suggests that it is deliberate, or intentional. There are no two ways about that - every action in our lives that we ever do are one of only two things - intentional and unintentional. To put this into context, if a driver has an accident because his brakes fail on a hill, it is obviously mechanical failure, and the driver is not at fault. As road law states there is no such thing as an accident, it is therefore implying that someone consciously caused the accident. It is therefore implying either that the manufacturer deliberately made bad brakes, or the garage deliberately didn't fix them properly, or a disgruntled employee at the factory deliberately sabotaged it. These are extremely serious allegations to make and obviously should not be made lightly. It's about time this stupid law changed and acknowledged that sometimes an accident is just that - an accident that no-one could have done anything about! No human being is perfect, we all make unintentional and unavoidable mistakes - either the driver, another driver or the manufacturer - so why can't road law accept that?!

Just thought I'd mention that on "Police, Camera, Action" recently it was stated by a chief constable that speeding is the main cause of a third of all road deaths. Seems quite a lot of very preventable deaths to me, and all it takes is to obey these simple roadsigns. Couldn't be easier.

This is on behalf of my mother. She has a standard PAYG Orange mobile phone. Whenever she doesn't top up by £10 a month, she receives about 5 text messages per day telling her "top up to get your bonus credit for next month", etc. The reason she hasn't topped up is because she has enough credit and so doesn't need to top up! We feel this is becoming harrassment with all these messages urging her to top up. The customer is not completely stupid - when they run out of credit, they will top up! But Orange just won't stop texting and it's quite annoying as you can imagine getting message like this several times every single day. Has anyone else had this irritation? Does it count as harrassment or anything like that?

Here's what happened on a flight we took from Venice to Bristol on Saturday evening. We had arrived at the airport in plenty of time and got to check-in when it first opened. We had not purchased 'Speedy Boarding' but we were one of the first to check in so we were in 'Priority Group A'. When boarding, they called forward all those who had purchased Speedy Boarding, plus priority groups A and B (the first customers to check in) to get on the first bus to the plane. Priority groups C and D then got onto a second bus a few minutes after us. When we got to the plane, our bus just sat for about 3 minutes and they wouldn't let us out. Eventually they let us onto the plane. But they would only let everyone from our bus into the back door of the plane (rather than letting people get on at either exit which is much more convenient for the passengers and lets the plane leave quicker). By this time, the second bus had pulled up to the front door of the plane and let those customers on straightaway. Those on the second bus got onto the aeroplane more quickly than those on the first bus. The moral: the earlier you check in, the later you get on the plane. Next time we will turn up to the airport 2 minutes before check-in closes!

I have no knowledge at all about the regulations concerning delivery drivers resting etc. so I cannot comment on that. On the original subject of the thread: I myself am not particularly in favour of speed cameras. I am merely in favour of obeying the speed limits. Obey the speed limits and there is no need for speed cameras. There are undoubtedly some locations where a speed camera has not made a road any safer at all, and there are others where a camera has definitely made it safer. It is usually easy to tell which category any given camera falls into. I feel it is wrong to suggest either that none improve safety or that they all improve safety. Some do and some don't. I feel that using the information and opinions of one single website that is vehemently against a particular issue (in this case speed cameras) is not the best way to present an argument. Arguments would be much more credible if people used several impartial sources of information and used that information to form their opinions, rather than using just the one website which obviously has strong propaganda for one side of the argument without considering the opposing view. Although I do not consider myself sympathetic to speed cameras, I have no issues with them because I do not break the speed limits - regardless of whether or not there is a camera. If the sign says 40, I slow to 40, or slower if it is not safe to go at 40 itself. Speed cameras do not punish law-abiding drivers; if you are exceeding the speed limit, you are not abiding the law. You may not be someone who regularly breaks the law in daily life, but you have done it in this case so there are no excuses. The best thing to do if (correctly and legally) caught for speeding would be to accept your mistake, take it as a lesson, pay the fine and move on with your life with no need to lament on it. Don't speed again and you have nothing to worry about. We all make mistakes and there's no shame in that as long as we accept that we were wrong, apologise to anyone harmed, and try our utmost not to make the mistake again. The important thing is that we learn from them - there is shame is you are stubborn and refuse to accept it. I am not trying to patronise, just stating my honest opinion.