If you are a driver seeking work via an agency, make sure that any agency you sign up with has its own drivers’ negligence insurance in place.
It can be difficult to find policies that will allow you to insure yourself as a self-employed driver, and as we shall see, any company that hires you will not wish to use its own insurance policies to claim for any damage you may cause.
Unfortunately, no matter how carefully you might drive, it is a fact of life that agency drivers are more likely to be involved in accidents than non-agency drivers. You may have been recruited for an assignment at short notice, you may lack experience of the vehicle and/or the route, and you may have been allocated an assignment that none of the company’s regular drivers want, or given the vehicle that no-one else wants to drive.
You also can’t rely on the company that hires you to provide the necessary insurance cover. The company will not want to claim for any damage you cause under its own insurance policy, as its claims history would be affected simply by making a claim, when the damage was in fact not caused by one of its own staff.
This type of insurance only covers minor accidental damage claims – examples of when a claim might need to be made under a drivers’ negligence insurance policy include:
- Damage caused by doors being opened
- Damage caused by reversing into bollards and other obstacles
- Damage caused when vehicles skim low bridges or other height restrictions
As well as checking with your agency that they have drivers’ negligence insurance in place, make sure you also ask them:
- How much cover is provided – some policies limit the amount of any one claim at £10,000 or £15,000
- If you might drive abroad, whether their insurance covers all territories you might drive in – some plans only provide cover for the UK, or for the EU
- What vehicle types are covered by their insurance
- If you are a younger driver, whether there is a lower age limit for the insurance – sometimes drivers aged under 25 will not be covered
- If you don’t have a clean licence, whether drivers with a certain number of points on their licence are excluded from cover
