‘The law is an ass!’ (My late grandfather).

The necessity to protect one’s girlfriend, partner or wife was cuttingly brought home to me at the tender age of eleven years. Whilst accompanying Pamela to the Saturday afternoon cinema show she sharply reprimanded me for walking on the inside as we walked along the pavement.

‘My other boyfriend always walks on the outside. He’s a gentleman.’ I felt cut to the quick, and from then onwards have always attempted to be a gentleman when in the presence of a lady.

Whilst the format for decent gentlemanly behaviour is generally patently obvious in some areas it is not, and what might seem to be obvious can be exactly the opposite.

Most bikers are also car drivers and in either or both contexts are hopefully legally insured. But are you? Most of us are (or at least believe we are) because as well as wishing to comply with the law we are naturally unwilling to personally bear the cost of a claim for third party loss, particularly arising from personal injury or death. Claimed losses, often enormous, are surely down to our insurer to potentially meet?

Yet many bikers personally face such a risk if their passenger and / or others suffers injury/ other losses by virtue of their careless driving simply because they carry a pillioneer. And in the process can have their policy declared null and void, which would potentially invite criminal prosecution for failure to have valid insurance.

How can this madness be?

Whilst it used to be the case that in the case of both car drivers and bike riders passengers were automatically covered by the driver’s / rider’s insurance policy such is no longer the case. Whilst it remains the norm for car drivers it has become the exception for bike riders. In other words bike riders are likely not automatically allowed to carry a pillioneer unless their statement of insurance (certificate of insurance or policy) permits such use. If there is no opt in or opt out clause then one is potentially on unclear ground.

Insurance documentation can be immensely difficult to read / understand and even if you do have pillioneer cover your documentation may not positively state such in simple direct terms.

For example in the case of ‘Hastings Direct’ reference to such is oddly set out in their ‘Insured Vehicle Details’ and is expressed in these terms ‘Exclude Pillion Use: No.’ I read that to mean that one is insured to carry a pillioneer.

If you have any reason to suspect that your own insurance cover may be inadequate then either take legal advice and / or e-mail your insurer requesting specific written advice in simple English.

I never read replies / comments on my posts and so cannot enter into correspondence on this blog, and in any event I no longer hold a solicitor’s practising certificate/ professional insurance cover so am legally barred from undertaking one on one legal advice, even on a free basis.

Rather a long-winded way of stating the bleedin' obvious while omitting anything remotely useful.
The big question is, if you accidentally injure your pillion passenger, who then claims several million, will the insurance company pay up?                                                                                                                                                                             

Some thing a lot of people ignor when an insurance company asks ‘do you carry a pillion?’ is that under UK law you have to have every seat on your vehicle insured for a passenger if your able to carry one. The only get out if you wish to get cheeper insurance is remove the seat and the footrests. Otherwise your able to carry so must be insured to do so.

The question they used to ask was how many seats does your vehicle have. Which is a better way to put it than ‘do you carry?’