The government has announced major reforms to the compensatory protection for victims of motor accident victims. A new Uninsured Drivers Agreement 2015 will come into force on 1 August 2015.
The Department for Transport says that it is working on a new Untraced Drivers Agreement and it is likely that this will involve further consultation.
Solicitor Nicholas Bevan, who has campaigned for extensive reform of the compensatory safeguards for motor accident victims, welcomed the news. Bevan has written extensively in NLJ, arguing that wide ranging reform is necessary to bring them into line with the minimum standards of protection required under European law.
Bevan says: "The new Uninsured Drivers Agreement is a significant improvement on its predecessor, unfortunately the 1999 Agreement, with all its defects and vicious strike out clauses, will continue to apply for all accidents that predate 1 August 2015.
The good news is that the new agreement is shorter, simpler and less unjust to accident victims. The Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) has been stripped of many of its powers to reject legitimate claims for trivial procedural infractions.
"For example, the minister has removed the need for the MIB’s detailed and arcane procedures by the simple expedient of making it obligatory to join the MIB as a party in any action.
"Unfortunately the new agreement contains a number of serious breaches of European law that favour the interests of insurers at the expense of accident victims.”
The government’s proposals for revising its statutory provision following the Court of Justice’s ruling in Damijan Vnuk v Zavarovalnica Triglav C-162/13, last September, is still awaited.
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