Im covered to drive anybodys car with the registered owners permission as are most over 25 yr olds who have there own policy...

My question is.. am i covered to drive my girlfriends company car? As the registered owner is the lease company they strictly speaking they cant give me permission.. but the registered driver can.

Can I just urge people to double-check their policy documents before assuming this. The companies started to remove this type of cover several years ago and not everyone is aware that they may not have that cover now.

Secondly, the cover is *Road Traffic Act Only* in most cases, not even third party cover. The insurance covers driving another vehicle in an emergency, not for commuting or regular use. Again, this is something people fall foul of on a regular basis, usually when they try to claim.

Finally, given what I've mentioned in para 2, I'd suggest you need a manager or similar to give written authorisation that in an emergency they would give you permission to drive the vehicle on your own risk (insurance).

Hope this helps?

with my old company car I was allowed to add somebody to the insurance who lived in the same household!

Cheers for that stan.. didnt realise that was such a misconception.. ive checked my policy and it does seem to be 3rd party which im glad as i requested that specifically..

As for a letter from the manager.. im girl friend uses the car through a lease company which leases it to her business.. of which she is a director..

Would i need permission from her or from the lease company?

I'd suspect it would be from her, but now we're getting outside my field of expertise, if you know what I mean?

I think I'm going to have to disagree with you twice on this one, Stan.

I would imagine the lease company would be p*ssed off about anybody driving their car on 3rd party insurance and, as they are the legal owner of the vehicle, they'd have to give their permission for somebody else to drive it.

Secondly, what's "Road traffic act only" insurance? The RTA specifies that drivers must be insured against 3rd party risks ... which is what 3rd party only insurance is. Insurance companies do tell people the the 3rd party extension is for emergencies only, but I've never yet found anything in one of my insurance policies (which form the contract) describing what an 'emergency' is or placing any restrictions, other than having the owner's permission, on using it.

Basically, while insurance companies would prefer you not to use the 3rd party extension for day-to-day use you could and, if you had to make a claim, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, unless they could make a good case for you being the principle user of the vehicle.

Ah well, a good point regarding the lease company, and as I said it was getting beyond my remit/knowledge base

Road Traffic Act only insurance is not the same as third party cover, but it could well be me showing my age. It was certainly an issue several years ago, as it gave the bare minimum of cover to be able to drive a motor vehicle on the road without offering some of the cover of third party policies. I'll need to do some digging to check what the differences are.


Edit: Found it!

I thought I was going mad, thankfully I'm not! I note that the document says this type of cover is rarely issued.

Just picking up the first insurance policy I could find, which happened to by one of my bike ones it has this to say:



And that's it. Nothing about emergency use only, nothing about any limitation of 3rd party claims (the rest of the policy limits a single claim to £20,000,000 in property damage and £25,000,000 in total).

I'm also a bit puzzled by your link, as I don't recall the RTA ever putting a financial limit on what was meant by 3rd party losses, so I don't see why the value of a claim should be limited to £25,000.