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Toyota recall insurance threat
05 February 2010
Toyota owners who ignore the current recall notice could be uninsured if they are subsequently involved in an accident as a result of a throttle problem.
Although owners of affected cars with valid insurance are covered as normal - and will continue to be so for some time after they receive their recall notices - there is a risk that they won't be fully covered if it can subsequently be proved they ignored the recall notice.
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"If you choose to ignore the recall notice and are subsequently involved in an accident where the item identified by the recall notice is proved to be faulty, then theoretically you could be held partly responsible for the accident," a spokesman for the Association of British Insurers told Autocar.
"The general rule of thumb is that you are responsible for keeping your car in a roadworthy condition. If it can be proved that you knew about the recall, ignored it and that the recalled part then contributed to an accident, theoretically you could be held partly responsible.
"Of course, in practice, all those things could be hard to prove, but each case would be investigated individually by the insurers as normal."
The spokesman confirmed that an insured driver would still be covered for all third party damage, but that they could struggle to make a claim on damage to their own vehicle.
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