United Kingdom
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (UK), better known as the DVLA, is an Executive Agency of the Department for Transport (DfT). The Agency is accountable to the Secretary of State and Ministers and, through them, to Parliament and the public, for efficient and effective management of the Agency and its responsibilities. Its primary aims are to facilitate road safety and general law enforcement by maintaining registers of drivers and vehicles, and to collect vehicle excise duty (car tax).
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Vehicle identity check
The Vehicle Identity Check (VIC) was introduced to help reduce vehicle crime. It is intended to deter criminals from disguising stolen cars with the identity of written off or scrapped vehicles, a practice known as 'ringing'. Since the introduction of the VIC scheme in April 2003, around 717,000 checks have been undertaken with only 38 confirmed ‘ringers’ detected, at a cost of around £30 million to the motorist. The VIC test is at present under review.
When an insurance company writes off a car under Categories A, B or C (but not D), the car is recorded as a 'write off' and the registration document (V5 logbook) is surrendered to them and destroyed. The insurance company will then notify the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) that the vehicle has been written off. This notification will set a 'VIC marker' on the vehicle record on the DVLA database. If the vehicle is then repaired with the intention of returning it to the road, the DVLA will not issue a new registration document or vehicle excise duty licence until the car passes a vehicle identity check (VIC). The VIC is designed to help confirm that the vehicle being returned to the road has been repaired following any accident damage and has not been stolen.
The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) will carry out the VIC. This will involve comparing the vehicle presented to VOSA against the information held by DVLA, such as the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), make, model, colour and engine number. The VIC compares the record of previous accident damage with evidence of damage repair as well as checking other components to confirm the age and identity of the vehicle.
Vehicle check
The DVLA provides information on the registration of vehicles to certain vehicle check companies for consumer protection and anti-fraud purposes. The information may be added to by companies with details from the police, finance and insurance companies.
MIAFTR Data
MIAFTR data is provided by the UK insurance industry and states whether the vehicle has been "written off" by an insurer. Insurers make an economic decision as to whether to write off a vehicle in the case of a claim depending upon the current value of the vehicle against the cost of repairs in the claim. Should the cost be deemed too large to make repairing the vehicle economical, a category will be assigned to the vehicle. This category is not an indication of the level of damage that the vehicle suffered in the incident which triggered the claim. As it is an economical decision whether the vehicle is repaired or is written off, that decision is now based on the cost of repairs against the vehicle's pre-accident value.
The table below entitled "Total loss category descriptions" is NOT an official document; it is the opinion and interpretation of an individual. The official description by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) is much simpler and at the same time completely out of date.
A system that needs updating The fact is that today's insurance loss adjusters/engineers have no uniformity in their decisions and the level of damage between a cat D or C is meaningless as Cat D or C is now no longer an indication of the level of damage.
This brings a further question. Why have cat C and D at all! The VIC test only applies to cat C cars and is decided by the engineer who informs DVLA that the Log book has been shredded. As previously mentioned this is to deter car ringers who would buy a cat C and use the VIN plates and documents to sell on a stolen car of the same model and spec. So why isn't a cat D subject to the same VIC? Historically maybe cat d cars were hardly damage but not now.
Even the official description of what makes a cat C or D is ambiguous. C: Repairable, where the insurer's repair costs exceeded the vehicle's pre-accident value. D: Repairable, where the insurer's repair costs did not exceed the vehicle's pre-accident value.
The reason insurance companies sell on the vehicles that they do not repair is to recoup some of their total loss. If they did not sell these vehicles your insurance premiums would become more expensive. Also it makes GREEN sense in this throwaway society to repair that that can be repaired.
Is it time for a change? There were 265,877 road vehicle accidents in 2012. Of those 197,388 were cars. If 60% of those were repaired by the insurer then there are 118.4 thousand repaired cars put back on the road in 2012 and beyond. These cars have been through the same process of being repaired but they don't have any Category D or C marked against them. The reason for this is the insurance company only informs HPI of the cars it does not repair and their category. Insurance companies do not tell HPI of the cars that they did repair and no one will ever know.
They say this is because an engineer inspect the cars repaired by insurance companies, but do they? and if they do so what?
Why not give every car that is damaged a category based on the level of damage say A to Z and the category stays with the car no matter who repairs it. Now, would you as a vehicle owner accept your vehicle back from the repairers knowing that the vehicle has a category against it. Of course not, because the stigma that is attached the category repaired cars means it would never achieve its PAV and again your insurance premiums would become more expensive.
Why should a car that is repaired by the insurance companies workshop not have a category.
does this system help the motorist? Identical cars A and B both have identical damage. Car A was in London while car B was in Stockport. It cost £900 more to fix car A that car B because of the storage charges in London. It so happens that they are both with the same insurance company (not that it really matters). The same Loss Adjuster/engineer decides not to have car A repaired (so car A automatically gets a category C) as the repair cost for car A are £400 above his maximum for that cars year and model however he will get car B repaired.
So car B gets repaired and is not shown on any database and the owner certainly will never tell a future buyer that fact and even if he did the car is NOT on any database as a category car.
Car A however is bought from the insurance company by the registered workshop (not that it really matters) that repaired car B. They repair car A to the same standard BUT car A is now on the HPI register as a category C and no matter how many engineers inspect and pass the car it cannot be removed from HPI's database. Even if (after a £300 test) HPI categorised the car as Condition inspected the car is still category C.
Would the real solution be to allow every repaired car to have a category removed once inspected by an independent official registered vehicle engineer.