When accidents cause damage or injury and the responsible driver is uninsured, a claim can be made to the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB), an organisation financed by motor insurers with the intention of compensating those who have been involved in accidents with uninsured drivers.
The existence of the MIB is the result of governmental insistence that insurers should operate a safety net. However, it is controlled by the motor insurance industry and is not free from conflicts of interest.
Changes to its Untraced Drivers Agreement and Uninsured Drivers Agreement came into effect on 1 March 2017. These are intended to remove some of the impediments to claims under the old rules and to achieve a better degree of compliance with European law designed to ensure that victims of accidents involving untraced vehicles or uninsured drivers can be compensated.
However, within the new rules lurk some worrying limitations, some of which impinge on the claimant’s right to receive independent advice.
If you have been the victim of an accident, you should always have the right to independent legal advice if you choose.