Pertinent point of the day
Published:
September 4, 2013 at 8:50pm
A reader raised the following point:
Is Silvio Scerri’s car insurer all right with this kind of thing?
When and if the car crashes, which car would it be for insurance/legal purposes: the presumably insured ZER 088 or the uninsured (because no government cars are) GM14?
Does its insured identity depend on which set of plates this car happens to be wearing at the time an accident occurs?
11 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
The insurance paid relates to the car’s original plates, so if an accident happens when the plates fixed at that moment in time are GM, there should be issues. It’s the same with DV cars.
Why are government cars uninsured?
[Daphne – Because they’re owned by the government, and it is assumed that the government is solvent and will pay for damages. ]
They don’t even bother about crashing the country.
Anything goes in Malta, and everything is tolerated. As long as it is Labour, because we hold Labour to much lower standards than we hold the PN.
It won’t matter what number plate it carries when involved in an accident. They will just leave or replace the number plate according to what suits them most at that moment. Mhux li jridu jaghmlu? Minn ser jmeriehom? Il-pulizija?
Is it legal to switch plates? Aren’t number plates linked to the car chassis number and log book?
For the insurer the car plate number doesn’t mean anything. It’s the chassis number which they look at.
Indeed, we did change direction. And how! Down a vortex of unruliness. What kind of messages are these people sending out to John citizen?
Maybe Silvio Scerri just cancelled his insurance ghax taghna knoll.
From downright scary to downright ridiculous. It’s ‘chasse’ time up here. Would love to have them in my sights.
It is standard procedure to use GM and DV plates over the car’s own plates. Whenever black taxis are hired out to be used on government business, where appropriate, they would wear GM or DV plates.
They are really just for privilege/authorisation purposes, otherwise meaningless.
Unlike in more civilised countries where drivers of “VIP” vehicles tend to observe the law, not least to set an example, in Malta and other African countries VIP vehicles are assumed to be above the pettier provisions of the law such as those on parking and priority. Basically, “jaghmlu li jridu”.
The number-plates do not alter the identity of the vehicle itself for any purposes – but, and this is a big but, who knows how an insurer would react were a vehicle, insured as a private vehicle but used for government business, to be involved in an accident involving a substantial liability.