Winter Tyres and your insurance… <back The article headed ‘Winter Tyres: The law in Germany’ as printed in Sixth Sense (Issue 1349) states that if you intend any form of alpine driving then for your own peace of mind and improved safety you should fit the correct tyres. To this effect we wholly agree with the advice given. Failure to do so could result in accidents leading to inconvenience at best and physical injury at worst. The article also suggests that drivers should contact their insurance companies to ensure that they are adequately covered. I am pleased to confirm that the Groupama BFG Motor policy most certainly does cover motorists irrespective of the tyres fitted, provided your vehicle is in a roadworthy condition. However, whilst the simple premise under which UK policies are written requires motorists to ‘do all you can to protect your car and its contents and keep your car in a roadworthy condition’, German insurers operate different policy conditions to UK companies and one feature, unique to the German system, is the imposition of Gross Negligence (so called Paragraph 61). Under this clause a German insurer may decline (or reduce) compensation for Accidental Damage to their policyholder’s car if they consider the incident has been caused by their ‘Gross Negligence’. This could include ‘failing to fit Winter Tyres whilst driving in hazardous conditions’ and other interpretations have also included ‘excess speed on an unrestricted autobahn’ and many others. This latter example sounds incredulous (excess speed on an unrestricted autobahn) but, of course, if the road conditions were poor (fog, rain, ice etc) then excessive speed could be rightly regarded as Gross Negligence! However, the use of Gross Negligence to decline or reduce compensation does not apply to UK companies and therefore the Groupama policy issued to BFG entitled personnel will indemnify you in full. Keith Frampton |
