The car insurance information contained within these pages is based on information supplied by The Claims Guru, a site packed with useful information about the inner workings of insurance companies and their products.
Third Party Insurance
Third party insurance gives you protection for any claim made against you, your driver (if someone else was driving) or the person responsible for your car. You must by law (the Road Traffic Act(s) ) have a certain minimum amount of cover. All policies in the UK giving 'third party cover' or more, will provide greater protection than the law requires. Whether you just have 'third party only'; 'third party fire and theft' or 'comprehensive' you will have this section.
"I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it. "
Extracts taken from actual claim forms submitted to
a number of UK car insurance companies
If you are to blame for causing an accident your insurer will pay for all sums of money that you must pay by law to those victims you have injured or killed. Or whose property you have damaged and so on. This includes any legal costs you have to pay to the victims solicitors and any legal costs your own insurers incur looking after your interests.
In practice what happens is that your insurer will deal with the third party claim and you should not have to worry about it.
This whole question of third party cover becomes very confusing when you are a passenger in your own car and it is being driven by someone else. Provided that the other person is allowed to drive it, then it is the driver who is protected by this section and not you. Your policy wording will list those who are insured to drive the vehicle, for example, named drivers, passengers, employer. Thus if you, as the passenger, were to be injured owing to the negligent driving of the person driving your car, you have the legal right to claim compensation from that person. So your policy here would 'indemnify' the driver, not you. You would end up with the money. Unfortunately you cannot claim for damage to your car under this section.
If a thief takes your car and causes an accident (an all too often occurrence!) this section of the policy will protect you, as owner of the car, against any claim for damage or injury caused by the thief. This might seem unfair - after all it was the thief who was to blame! Remember, we are concerned here with the law. The intention is to make sure that innocent victims of otherwise uninsured drivers who are injured or who have some sort of damage caused by an uninsured driver's negligence should be compensated. How many thieves have the money to pay for that? So it is possible, in practical terms, for the victim to make a claim on your policy. Claims can be very complicated where a thief causes damage or injury.
