Thousands of motorists are thought to have purchased a written-off vehicle without the knowledge of its past repairs.
An insurance database loophole is seeing one in 50 vehicle write-offs put back on the road with a clean vehicle history, an Autocar investigation has found.
The Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud Theft Register (MIAFTR) is used by insurers to record the details of cars they have written off, and by vehicle-check companies when confirming a car’s status.
However, the MIAFTR is a voluntary scheme, and not all of the UK’s 200 insurers are signed up to it, meaning insurance write-offs can be resold without the correct vehicle status.
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Vehicle history checker, Motorcheck, estimates that at any given time, more than 2,000 cars are advertised with a clean history, but which have serious questions about their past life.
Autocar editor Mark Tisshaw said: “Used buyers are at risk of unknowingly buying a written-off vehicle because of this loophole in the industry.
“A single vehicle health check is no longer a good enough guarantee, as our investigation found owners had bought cars which had been incorrectly flagged as not written-off by a vehicle health check provider.
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“The Motor Insurance Bureau has told us they are introducing new measures to improve the database, but for now buyers remain at risk of inadvertently buying second-hand cars with incorrect histories, as well as having to rely on multiple vehicle check agencies to get an accurate understanding of their potential purchase’s background.”
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