After a road accident the driver at fault should call for the emergency services if necessary, and give you his or her details, including insurance details if they have them to hand. unfortunately, more and more drivers simply leave the scene, claiming if they are caught that they panicked. They are not usually found. Those who do give their correct particulars may not be insured, or their insurance may not cover them.

Insurers can avoid cover if someone is driving who is not named or allowed on the policy, if the driver is using the car for a purpose (usually, business) not permitted under the policy, or in some cases, because the policy specifically says it does not cover anyone driving while drunk. The insurer may decline cover if the driver has a medical condition and they have not been notified. The driver may stop and give you a Gallic shrug, because he is Gallic - foreigners with overseas registrations can cause crashes, but most people don't know where to start in trying to recoup losses from them.

And in lots of other cases, the driver never bothered paying for insurance in the first place or the cover note has expired - with premiums of �� or more for third-party cover for teenage male drivers, and court fines often much less than that, it is hardly surprising.

The Motor Insurers' Bureau exists to help the injured victims get compensation for their injuries and damage to property, in all these cases.

If you use a lawyer, the MIB will pay the full legal costs for an uninsured motorist case, but only a limited amount (�� plus most disbursements) on an untraced (hit and run) case. Unless you use your own legal expenses cover, a solicitor will sign you up to a conditional fee agreement, which I discussed in my last article, for an uninsured case, and you are likely to get all or nearly all of your damages. For an untraced driver claim, though, they may ask you to sign a contingency fee agreement. That can mean they take a fixed amount of your damages, typically 25% or more.

Happily, insurance companies have to deal themselves with uninsured drivers' claims, if there is any identifiable insurance cover relating to the vehicle - so, in all the cases where insurers avoid cover, as the example above where the driver is drunk or failed to notify a medical condition, they still have to pay out to the victim. The only difference is that the insurer can try to get a refund from their policyholder, if appropriate. Your insurance company has to pay if someone steals your car and injures people, but they should not try to recoup the money from you, or reduce your no-claims bonus, obviously.

The MIB has a limit to the amount of property damage it will pay, and a deductible amount or "excess" for each claim. It will not pay if the victim was a passenger, and knew the driver was uninsured. It covers accidents on the public roads only, so with petrol station prangs and pub car park disasters, you are on your own. If a joyrider tears over the kerb, hitting people on the grass on a council estate, they may reject the claim, but if you are hit on the pavement adjoining the road, they will normally pay. And the damage has to be caused by a motor vehicle, so the baby run over in its pushchair by a cyclist is outside their remit. If someone uses their vehicle as a weapon and deliberately injures you, as happened to one of my clients in the middle of a nasty divorce, the claim is not to the MIB but to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority.

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