Don"t Leave the Keys in Your Car

Be very careful out there when you are parking your car.
The good old days of casually leaving your car in the driveway with the keys in it are over as far as insurance services in Ireland are concerned.
How many time have we all popped into shop or filling station and left the keys in the ignition or even running? Countless times, no doubt, particularly in rural areas where there appeared to be less risk of your vehicle being stolen.
All this has now changed in recession hit Ireland.
However, a spate of car theft crime is rampant throughout Ireland in the last year or more, believed to be organized in the main by Eastern European gangs who export the vehicles back to their homelands.
This has prompted insurance companies to take a very hard line on the cars and jeeps (a particularly attractive target for these gangs) that are stolen whilst the keys are in the ignition and the vehicle unattended.
The insurers take the view that this amounts to negligence on behalf of the owner and this invalidates any claim they have assuming the vehicle is covered comprehensively or for fire and theft.
A vehicle insured as third party cover only is not covered for theft in any case.
The insurers are homing in on other areas of what they consider negligence by the owner.
For example, many insurers insist that high value cars have a satellite tracker system fitted as part of the conditions of the policy.
The helps greatly in locating the car if it is stolen.
Stating that you will put the tracker on it in your proposal form and then failing to do it will immediately invalidate a claim for theft.
Indeed, even if you have a tracker system on it and fail to renew the annual monitoring agreement (which a lot of people do), then your claim is invalid as the insurers will rightfully claim that having effectively an inactive tracker on the vehicle amounts to negligence.
The moral here is to study the small print in your motor insurance policy and adhere to the conditions you agreed to in the first place when you took out the policy.
Always keep at hand a copy of the proposal form you originally filled out.
Happy motoring!