some months ago my son's renault megane (sorry) was parked on a slope. after 20 mins approx it rolled forward into a tree. Apparantly, learners are not taught to leave car in gear as a secondary brake these days!

 

Insurance paid out no quibble ( must have been 3/4 k ). My son maintained handbrake was fully on when parked. On return of car from repair shop he took it back as handbrake wasn't efficient- it was 'rectified'. At Mot in Feb he was told problem with handbrake. It was fixed but no mention on invoice.

 

Now handbrake wont work. Mot station have no recollection of any repair/adjustment & the repairers say that all the insurance company require is to repair damage to the vehicle, not to rectify a fault which may have lead to the incident!!

 

Is that correct? What if the car had rolled into another tree/car only days after the first repair; would the insurers pay out again? If they did and the same incident happened for a third time, would they pay out again? Surely it is in the insurer's interest to ensure the vehicle is fully re-instated to a condition where a recurrence is not likely?

 

Are there any insurance industry people on here who can shed light on this situation?

I would say insurance are not responsible, as they are there to pay for repair costs not search for bad maintance problems if you know what i mean.

I accept what you say, but if there was evidence of bad maintenance I would have expected an insurer to refuse to pay, as they are not providing a warranty.

I would be more concerned about the insurers refusing to pay because of evidence of poor maintenance

I would be more concerned about the insurers refusing to pay because of evidence of poor maintenance

 

Yeah I wouldn't go chasing this too much and saying the handbrake is still faulty or you might find they want their money back!

 

Insurance isn't there to maintain cars or everyone would be crashing into walls to get their brakes fixed for free every time they needed a set of pads LOL

i think u will find you have to maintain the car eg brakes etc! but if your son thinks it was working fine the first time around he could be right!! as its common on french & other cars for the hand breaks to fail after being applied after a drive, what happens is the breaks are warm & expanded so the hand break works when u pull up outside your house then after 20 mins or so the brakes cool down & shrink back thus leaving the hand break loose!!!

Right - two horrors!!

 

Depending on who the insurers are and how fussy they are about paying out, we find that in cases of mechanical failure they will often only cover the resultant damage and not the part that has caused the failure. They are unlikely to pay out more than once for damage caused by one faulty part as most policy wordings do state that the client is responsible for maintainig the vehicle to a roadworthy standard and if they already know that there was a fault with it they probably wont entertain another claim for the same fault.

 

It would be advisable to get an expert's opinion on what the fault with the handbrake is, they would be able to establish if it is related to the accident or something which has occurred since. If it can be proven that it is accident related then the repairing garage from the claim may rectify it, however they may advise that it is nothing to do with the incident in which case it would be up to the client to deal with.

 

hope that helps!!

 

Dan