One driver claims "Slid down drive and hit my own garage, damaging my wife’s car inside"
The icy spell gripping the UK has led to a 23% rise in car insurance claims, according to AA Insurance.
An analysis of claims taken by the AA’s Cardiff call centre shows that the most common snow and ice-related incidents are collisions within moving traffic.
Common among these are tail-end collisions at traffic lights or roundabouts and sliding on bends into oncoming vehicles.
The second highest count of claims was for bumps with unattended parked cars.
AA Insurance director, Simon Douglas said: “When there is widespread snow and ice, the proportion of claims where the icy conditions are a contributory factor increases significantly. Although the number of claims increased by 23 per cent, in all nearly a third of claims during the recent spell of severe weather related to snow or ice.”
“Fortunately, most people are driving more slowly than usual in such conditions so the majority of claims are at a relatively slow speed and damage tends to be less costly to repair.”
Some of the claims explanations made to AA Insurance in the past week include:
- Slid down drive and hit my own garage, damaging my wife’s car inside
- Had to abandon my car and returned next morning to find the side had been taken out by a snow plough
- Hit a pile of frozen snow cleared off the road. It was as solid as a concrete block and completely wrecked my car
- My car slid down a hill on its own – I think it was nudged by another car. It hit a fence
- ‘I reversed, skidded and hit side of spouse’
- Skidded on black ice, hit the kerb, bounced off a tree, hit another car and ended up in the ditch. The accident cause a multiple collision
- I tried to avoid a large animal standing in a country road – it seemed dazzled by my lights. I braked but skidded on ice and hit it. It turned out to be a wild boar, which ran away but my car was very badly damaged
