itchyfeet wrote:Probably invalidate your insurance.
Theres a bit of an urban myth about generally "invalidating" insurance on a lot of car/motorbike forums... no tax = no insurance for example is the most common one I know of.
Understandably - and arguably quite rightly - the insurance industry won't mind people being scared into declaring all and everything pertaining to them and the car they are asking to be insured. No tax will not make a vehicle uninsured or unroadworthy. The reg keeper will be committing an offence but not be driving an uninsured vehicle.
The fact is an innocent 3rd party would be compensated if they made a claim to your insurance company...... and should an undeclared matter such as motoring conviction or modification be relevant and contributory to the incident then the insurance co would be within their rights to recover from you the cost of recompense to an injured 3rd party on a fault claim.
Silly example to illustrate - if you seriously injured a driver of another car by driving into him - you have insurance but you removed the 1.6CS and installed a V8 chevy small block and didn't inform your broker - Then,,,,, the insurance co would compensate the innocent but then recover from you, the cost by ultimately taking you to court and would prove that the modification was a contributory factor and/or would have increased your risk and premium if indeed they would have accepted you as a risk.
. The financial ombudsman have produced a paper that explains if the undeclared fact in response to a clear understandable question when taking out a policy (most often who is the main driver ? in cases where parent insures car as policyholder and son is "named driver") would have increased the premium then a percentage of the payout or 100% can reasonably be recovered from you.... fault party in a claim.
Disputes that cannot be resolved on liability would be decided ultimately..... in a court of law
If you turn out to be a homeless bankrupt without a p 2 p in; then you would face court too but the unfortunate would have had their compensation and we all pay for others dishonesty via the premiums charged.
I have both caused and been the victim of incidents - fortunately all minor - and although we all moan about how much it costs us - just imagine what you would be willing to pay and the value of insurance... in the event you were either at fault or the victim of a serious incident..
Best
Matt