Buying Short Term Car Insurance For a Fortnight

buying temporary car insurance for 14 days can make sense for a motorist. Fourteen days is a long time to risk being uninsured! Getting a short term car insurance policy might seem a bit pointless if you’re borrowing a mate’s van for the afternoon or lending your partner your car for a weekend away, but every driver has to be insured. It’s a legal requirement set out in the Road Traffic Act 1988, so if you’re going to lend your vehicle out to someone you’ll need to get covered.

Why would you want short term car insurance?

There are lots of different reasons why you would want this type of insurance. If loaning a car to a friend for a short time, you will need to get cover, or perhaps you’re borrowing a van for a house move. A temporary policy will give you the peace of mind you’ll need and cover you legally.

Businesses

Temporary car insurance has a really big application in business, especially when a colleague requires the use of a car for a meeting. If an employee drives a company car that he’s not insured for and he doesn’t have insurance of his own, the employer can be the one getting into trouble with the law. Driving with no insurance brings a 6 to 8 point penalty and a £5,000 fine, and there can be implications for the firm. The employer and employee can be prosecuted together, and held jointly liable under section S143 of the Road Traffic Act.

Legal Implications

Driving without Motor Vehicle Insurance is described as an “unqualified crime”, which means you can’t mount a defence of ignorance regarding the lack of insurance. All the prosecutor needs to do to establish that you drove without insurance is to prove that the car was used. Today’s roads lined with speeding cameras and our car parks, which record number plates on entry, make the prosecutor's job pretty easy, so if you drive without insurance, you’re chance of getting the points penalty and the £5,000 fine are pretty high.

What is covered?

Aside from covering you legally, temporary insurance covers the obvious things like damage to the vehicle from an accident and any malicious damage or fire damage. Accidental damage to other people’s property is often included, and you’ll probably also get cover for your legal obligations should you lose control and cause damage to someone’s home. Then there’s stuff like emergency medical treatment costs that can be covered and you could even get cover for the sound system and telephone system.

Final word

Getting a short term car insurance quote for a fortnight is pretty easy nowadays. There’s normally no obligation to buy no matter which insurer you check with, and as this sort of policy is pretty simple compared to annual policies, you’ll get a quote very quickly. You'll be able to get cover from 1 to 28 days, so if you need car insurance for 14 days to cover a holiday for example, you'll have plenty of companies to choose between. You might not find short term cover for all types of car, but that’ll probably only stop you in your tracks if you’re planning on lending your best mate your Lamborghini or any other expensive car for a fortnight!