Policy change on off-road bike insurance good news for bikers
Plan to scrap rule forcing all vehicles to have cover
Transport Secretary Grant Schapps has announced plans to scrap the controversial ‘Vnuk’ motor insurance law. The law was introduced across the EU following a ruling by the European Court of Justice in 2014. The case involved a Slovenian farm worker who was injured when he fell from a ladder after it was struck by a tractor. As the tractor was used entirely off-road, it was not required to have insurance. The case was referred to the court, which extended the requirements for insurance to cover vehicles’ ‘normal function’ and not just use on a public road. The implications of the ruling were huge. For a start it meant that all vehicles, even those not registered for road use such as track bikes or motocross bikes (or even forklift trucks and golf buggies), would have to be insured at all times. It also meant that any collision involving two vehicles, even if the collision didn’t take place on a public road, would have to have been treated as a regular road traffic accident for insurance purposes.
So a bump in British Superbikes between two riders would have gone through insurance. Calculations by the DfT suggested the insurance industry would have been on the hook for roughly £458 million per year, which would likely have been passed straight onto the general public with estimates of a cost increase of £50 per person per year. Although the ruling was already passed into British law when we were a member of the EU, it has yet to be implemented. Now that Britain has left the EU, the government are able to remove it from British law.