Read the print of the policies you have in your hands…
Is all you need to say. Fixed.
OP…. In essence and at its most basic:
1. Your Motor insurance pays for damage and / or injury you might cause to a third party. It’s the only thing that is required by law. A fully comprehensive policy then extends cover to include damage to or loss of the vehicle itself, for instance, theft, you running it into a ditch, it being destroyed by fire, some malicious person taking a coin to the side of it or any number of other disasters that might befall it.
None of those involve either the consequences of you falling ill (whether at home, in Scotland or the woods of Finland) or your vehicle suffering a mechanical breakdown.
2. Your Travel insurance covers you (your body) against death, injury and illness, whilst you are away from home. It also extends to cover such things as delays, cancellations, loss or theft of your possessions. None of those things involve the damage to or loss of your vehicle and / or you feeling unwell and unwilling (or unable) to drive. What the policy might do is:
i. Pay to fly you home for treatment, if necessary. If not, pay for your treatment abroad.
ii. Pay to fly you back again to collect your vehicle / continue your holiday and (maybe) its safe storage while you are in hospital / unwell.
3. Your mechanical breakdown policy. This covers you for the breakdown, subsequent repair and / or recovery of your vehicle. None of those are a collision or you feeling or being ill.
Now…. The tricky bit….
A. Not all policies are the same. Some breakdown policies might extend to include a crash but, more often than not this will fall to your Motor insurer
B. Some breakdown policies might extend to cover illness and the costs associated with safe storage and / or recovery
C. Some travel policies might extend to cover the costs associated with the recovery of the vehicle, following illness or your bodily injury.
D. Some motor policies have all sorts of other policies and covers bolted onto them. For example, travel insurance, breakdown insurance, legal expenses, damage to clothing. Some bods read these as “My policy includes….” In reality, it very probably doesn’t. What they actually have is several polices (often with different terms and different insurers) all bundled together inside one envelope, in some sort of ‘added value’ sale or because the bolt-on’s seem to the customer to be ‘free’ and are very often sold as such, as everyone likes something for nothing. They are not free, nothing ever is. They are also, very possibly, stripped down or reduced versions of broader (better) cover that might have been available separately for a modest premium.
In short, read YOUR policy and don’t rely exclusively on the equivalent of “My mate says….” as, as sure as eggs is eggs, the mate will not be around too long after the event.
I can give you an example. I buckled the wheel of my Pan European in the south of France. Buckling a wheel is not a breakdown per-se. I was not injured in the slightest. My breakdown insurer
arranged for car hire for the balance of my holiday and then back to London and the process associated with the bike being assessed by Honda in France and its eventual shipping back to the UK for repair. The important word is ‘arranged’ as my breakdown insurer recovered all their costs from my comprehensive motor insurer, the cause of the whole lot being me, buckling my front wheel, nothing more, nothing less. Why did my breakdown insurer arrange things and not my motor insurer? Simple, because the breakdown insurer is used to dealing with things. They know who to contact, they know who to speak to for car hire, they speak the local language. In short, they are efficient. The chances are that your motor insurer (whilst very good in the UK) will not have got the slightest clue how to arrange a truck on the N273 outside somewhere unpronounceable in southwest France to pick-up a stranded motorcyclist with a buckled wheel. So, they sub-contract the job to breakdown insurer who does know how to do all these things, as they do it 24/7/365.
Had I of spat myself off, as the Pan European flew through the air and broken say my leg in the process, I am sure that my Travel insurer would have met my hospital bills and (if necessary) my carriage back to the UK. I am equally sure that my bike would have been dealt with in the same way. There again, I had bought good insurance. Some are happy to gamble or not buy any at all.
Had I not buckled my wheel but instead, the wheel bearing had failed or had a piston flown through the top of the engine or the battery failed, then all of these would have been dealt with by my breakdown insurer, with no reference at all to my motor insurer. Had the piston, when it shot out, caught me smartly in the nuts on the way to the heavens, leaving me in urgent need of Nurse Maria’s cooling balms, then my Travel insurer would have picked up the costs of the bodily injury I had suffered. The breakdown insurer would deal with the bike.
- they were in receipt of very good health care
