Estonia, Financial Services, Insurance, Transport

The average damage caused was 2,140 euros but every year there have been cases where damage caused by an uninsured vehicle reached 60,000 euros.

Every year, vehicles without a valid traffic insurance policy cause an average of 500 traffic accidents; over a half of such vehicles were uninsured for over three months before the accident.

 ETIF damage prevention sphere manager Erik Ernits said that a typical vehicle that lacks traffic insurance and has caused a traffic accident is a car 14 years old; usually the driver of the vehicle is aware that that the car lacks insurance but still goes into traffic. In case of nearly a quarter of accidents, the traffic insurance was missing because of carelessness and people who drove the car did so without knowing there was no insurance.

Traffic damages caused by vehicles that lacked traffic insurance are compensated by the insurer or ETIF to the victim. The compensation is demanded back from the culprit of the accident but in practice often authorities don’t succeed in doing so, reported LETA.