Can you legally borrow a persons car? Whether you’re waiting for your car to come back from getting its MOT at the garage, are in between cars, or need a bigger vehicle to transport some stuff that won’t fit in your own, you might be wondering, is this ok? The good news is that yes, as long as the owner of the car has given you permission to drive it, you’re well within your rights to do so. However, the first and main thing to make sure of before you set off in somebody else’s car is that you are insured to drive it. Even if the car is fully insured by the owner, this doesn’t mean that you’ll be covered.
Check Your Own Insurance Policy First:
If you normally drive your own car and are borrowing somebody else’s because you’re getting your car repaired or need some extra space, you might be insured to drive it through your own insurance policy. This is most common if you are over the age of 25 and have fully comprehensive insurance on your own car. You can check by looking at your certificate of motor insurance to see if driving other cars are included. Generally, you will only have third party cover when you use this feature of your insurance policy.
Temporary Insurance Cover:
If you don’t currently have your own car, or your car has been written off, then you probably won’t be able to take advantage of cover for driving other vehicles on your insurance policy. So, if you want to borrow a car from somebody else, then you’ll have to get separate insurance for yourself. The easiest way to do this is to get a temporary cover. You can get temporary car insurance for the day, week, or in some cases even by the hour depending on how long you need to borrow the car for. Use Quotezone to enter your details and the vehicle’s details to get quotes for temporary car insurance and choose the one that suits your needs best.
Named Drivers:
If you expect to be borrowing somebody’s car often, for example – if you’ve just passed your driving test and want to borrow your mum or dad’s car to drive to work until you’ve saved up enough to buy your own, then the best option for insurance is to get them to add you to their insurance policy as a named driver. This will affect the price of their policy, however. Typically, if you don’t have much driving experience and are a new driver their premium will rise. But if you’re an experienced driver without any claims or accidents in the past five years they might even be able to save money by adding you. All they need to do is contact their insurance company to change the policy to include you. Once that’s done, you can borrow the car any time you like.
Whatever you need to borrow a car for, it’s perfectly legal as long as you’ve got the permission of the owner and are insured to drive it.
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