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I recently heard at a Motor Industry conference, to the point of annoyance, about the continued move towards the totally connected car. Manufacturers seem obsessed with the collection of data for a number of reasons. Some data helps them with the design of future vehicles, collecting information such as true MPG, emissions, faults and systems failures.

This information along with other data/information relating to where the vehicle is during working hours, scheduling servicing, monitoring deliveries and customer calls, calculating running costs and evaluating efficiency can help larger company fleet managers. Personally, a driver could use data to challenge speeding fines, tickets collected by cloned cars and identify ‘cash for crash’ scams.

But this increase in data collection could have sinister implications. Especially as there seems to be no differentiation between the cars that are bought or leased by large fleets and those bought or leased by SME’s and consumers. Within the large organisations employee rights to privacy are laid out in their conditions of employment but what about consumers and SME’s running cars within their businesses?

I don’t recall any customer ever being asked to sign a release allowing manufacturers to collect data from the new cars they drive. And when does the transmission of data stop. If you buy a used car that is 2 or 3 years old does data collection continue. Also if you are connected to the Internet it would seem that not only Google, or whichever search engine you use, can collect search history, so can the manufacturers it would seem.

And if large companies can collect information about where their drivers have been or currently are located why can’t a crook with a bit of IT nous do the same to find out where you are before breaking into your house? Or if the vehicles are out on business a competitor could see where all your sales and delivery staff are and target the same clients. We are entering a dangerous world and one over which we are having less control.

Little did I know that when I explained that you should clear down your telephone contact list held in your car when you sell it or return it at the end of your lease, that so much more data was likely to be collected and passed on. And how do you clear that down and prevent future transmission? We need legislation to protect us and our businesses urgently, it is a big flaw to this whole Big Data tsunami! Oh and I don’t doubt that the private eyes out there preparing divorce cases are all over this like a rash!!! By Graham Hill

I’ve talked about this subject before but recent statistics has caused me to mention it again. It seems that nearly six million drivers are caught out by auto renewals of their insurance, losing on average almost £120 per annum. I have to say when I changed my insurer at my last renewal I saved nearly £400 per annum so I know how important it is to shop around every year.

The research was carried out by comparethemarket.com and revealed that the average saving by shopping around is £119.39, up from £106 at the start of the year. Younger motorists suffer most when auto renewing with premiums being up to 30% more than could be achieved by shopping around.

And don’t just go onto the comparison sites, don’t forget that some of the cheapest insurers such as Direct Line are not on the comparison websites. So make sure you try them as well. Although I would strongly advise against Zurich who tried every way they could to avoid paying out on a damaged laptop of mine.

The Financial Ombudsman Service told them on 3 occasions to pay out but it wasn’t till the Ombudsman made a final ruling, two and a half years later, that they were told that they were wrong not to payout. They are crooks – don’t use them! Also don’t overlook insurance brokers, they certainly come into their own in the event of an accident and dealing with the paperwork. By Graham Hill

Could we see a new use for dash cams? It has cost tax payers a staggering £14.5 million to clear rubbish from our roads over the last 3 years. According to the Highways Agency 364,000 bags of rubbish have been collected at an average cost of £40 per bag.

That’s 333 sacks of litter collected every day from the 4,300 miles of Strategic Road Network. This is rubbish simply tossed out of cars by thoughtless drivers and passengers. This cost could have gone some way towards repairing thousands of potholes that are a serious danger to motorists and cyclists.

The Canadians came up with an app that you could use to report illegal parking to the local authority and receive payment for reporting it after the driver was fined. We could do the same with litter louts, record them chucking litter out of their vehicle windows, forward to the police who then issue a fixed penaty and you receive part of that fine for carrying out your duty as a concerned member of the public.

Nice little earner and would help to keep our streets cleaner. If you are one of those culprits, keep a bag in the car and put your rubbish in it then dispose of properly when you get home. By Graham Hill

One of the most common questions I get asked is how to finance your leased car. You have a number of choices if you run your own business, less of a choice if you are employed and only have one option provided by the company – finance the vehicle yourself then recharge the company for your business mileage.

But for many of my clients it can be a dilema which the HMRC is about to complicate further if their proposed changes go ahead. We knew that they were looking into Salary Sacrifice schemes which can get very complicated because it allows employees to pay for their car out of gross income rather than what the rest of us do and pay out of income after tax and NI has been paid.

I wasn’t surprised when it was announced that the HMRC were looking into this as they not only miss out on employee tax and NI payments but also employer NI. However, because of the very complex recording and reporting of car usage it has only been viable for providers of salary sacrifice to make available to companies of over 100 employees. And with only 80 – 100,000 cars on such schemes it has not grabbed the attention of the guys in HMRC.

However, it now seems that the net is widening and the tax man is now looking at the way company owners, directors and employees finance their cars in an effort to raise more money. They have taken the view that the provision of a car allowance should be lumped into the investigation.

With the proposals potentially being included in the Autumn Statement 2016 we could see the new rules effective from April 2017 this is worrying for those receiving car allowances, especially if they have opted for an Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV). If they had opted for a company car they could end up paying less tax than taking a car allowance. Very complicated but worth discussing with your accountant before making the decision. Once they have completed the consultation and finalised the rules I will let you know. By Graham Hill

The reason to install a dash cam in your car was originally to avoid arguments over insurance claims following cash for crash claims. These claims come about following an incident whereby a driver swerves in front of you, brakes hard, giving you virtually no time to stop causing you to run into the back of their car.

The driver and the passengers of the car in front all claim for whiplash injuries whilst you lose all your no claims bonus. With dash cam evidence the police can carry out an investigation and often prosecute the driver of the car in front on a variety of charges.

However, whilst dash cams are one of the biggest selling gadgets right now and Citroen have started fitting them as standard in their latest C3 to combat cash for crash crime, there are other reasons why you should install dash cams. They are invaluable for general claims as insurance companies become increasingly lazy.

In a recent case I read about a young driver who was sitting stationery in a backed up queue on a roundabout, when another impatient driver decided to take a quick route then cut in modifying the front end of her car. She was clearly not at fault so she claimed through her insurer for the repairs only to find that the other driver had made a claim against her insurance company, not only for repairs but also, guess what? Yep, whiplash.

The advice from her insurance company was to accept liability as in court a judge would be unlikely to find in favour of a newly qualified driver having an accident on a roundabout. That is a disgrace. However, had the young driver, whose premium was already ridiculously high and set to go higher, had a dash cam fitted the case would have been open and shut.

So isn’t it about time that manufacturers followed Citroen’s lead and started to install cameras as standard into the back of the rear view mirrors to help drivers to keep on the road and minimise claims times and costs as well as help police investigating accidents? After market dash cams are unsightly with wires dangling which puts drivers off installing them but maybe if the insurance industry and car manufacturers got their heads together we could see an end to cash for crash, quicker claims turnarounds, a decrease in insurance premiums, less time spent by police investigating accidents and more prosecutions. GH climbs down off soapbox for a sit down and cup of tea! By Graham Hill

I’ve warned in the past about selling your car that has hands free Bluetooth fitted and the need to delete your stored telephone numbers, especially if you have stored sensitive numbers that you wouldn’t want others to know. Well the situation is getting worse now that ‘connected’ cars are now being sold on or part exchanged.

Some cars built over the last couple of years are capable of connection to mobile devices via apps which is great for the owner of the new car but it can lead to all sorts of problems when these connected cars are bought by used car buyers down the line.

Tim Church from Weston-Super-Mare found this out when he sold his Land Rover Discovery Sport only to find that sometime later he was still able to access the car’s InControl App via the app on his phone. From his app he could still see the location of the new owner as well as whether the car was locked or not.

The latest connected facilities can include pre-warming or cooling the car from your app, remotely unlocking the car, downloading music as well as knowing where the car has been and is currently located. When questioned by Auto Express Land Rover said that it was the responsibility of the previous owner to remove the vehicle from their account when they sell it. I’m sure this will be of great comfort to new owners of Land Rovers! By Graham Hill

Good news for those who have a car that needs some repair work carried out on it and you have it done by a non-franchised (not a main dealer) garage. If the work isn’t carried out satisfactorily the normal course of action is to have a row with the garage and threaten legal action if he refuses to refund your money.

In future motorists will be protected from disputes with independent garages over unsatisfactory work as a result of a new £1,000 industry guarantee introduced by The Independent Garage Association (IGA). They pledge to cover bills of up to £1,000 from non-franchised garages who have signed up to their Trust My Garage scheme.

The scheme is due to come into force later in 2016 if work is found to be sub-standard and the garage refuses to pay back the money. As part of the terms of membership of any trade association the association has to provide an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service, which IGA do, using the National Conciliation Service.

If the ADR finds in favour of the motorist the garage is obliged to pay whatever is awarded. However, if they still don’t pay, the IGA will pay up to a maximum of £1,000 per claim. There are currently around 2,700 member garages and growing according to IGA. You can find your nearest IGA garage by visiting www.trustmygarage.co.uk By Graham Hill

One of my customers, Zamir Hussain, has rather bizarrely found himself in court following an accident that wasn’t his fault. He was provided with a like for like replacement car (not cheap considering he has a Range Rover) but after the other driver’s insurance company disagreed with the amount claimed for the hire car he now has to go to court.

He could end up having to pay all or part of the bill which is several thousands of pounds and serves as a stark warning to anyone involved in an accident. The situation requires a little unravelling so please bear with me. You’ve had an accident that wasn’t your fault and your car is booked in for repair. There is no dispute that the other party is at fault.

You now have one of two choices, you can claim through your insurance company which means that you lose your no claims discount or you can make the claim yourself against the other party. However, and this is the first point to note, you must advise your insurance company that you have been involved in an accident. Failure to do so could cause your insurer to refuse to insure you in future. You should send a letter to your insurance company making it perfectly clear that you are not making a claim, simply advising them.

So you have advised your insurance company and you are now faced with another choice. The bodyshop repairing your car may offer you a courtesy car. This is exactly what it is, a courtesy provided by the repairer, which tends to be a small engine’d modest car to keep you mobile. On the other hand your insurer may suggest that you take a like for like car and recommend a credit hire company who will provide you with a car, either the same as the one you drive or a similar grade. By taking this route you don’t lose your no-claims bonus but the car rental is in your name.

The agreement between you and the credit hire company includes payment terms. They will seek to recover the cost from the other party’s insurance company but, and this is a big but, if the other insurance company refuses to accept liability for the accident or for any other reason refuses to pay, you are liable as the agreement is in your name.  Whilst you may feel you have a right to expect a like for like replacement there is an overriding obligation on you to mitigate the costs to the other party (and his insurer) in the event of an accident.

For example if you have an accident that wasn’t your fault and you feel your car is driveable, then instead of having the car checked by an engineer you continue to drive it, you could cause additional damage. If subsequently it is found that you have caused irreparable damage to the engine the other person’s insurance company would most certainly challenge a claim for a replacement engine – and probably win.

It seems that some insurance companies are challenging hire costs, not because they are too high for the car but that a direct replacement shouldn’t have been provided in the first place using the mitigation of cost argument for the challenge. They will also challenge a rental charge for a replacement car if you keep the hire car after your car has been repaired. You may stand a better chance of your claim succeeding if you lease your car. You should point out that you are still paying for the lease of your car whilst it is being repaired so you should be entitled to claim for a like for like replacement.

Some Credit Hire companies also provide a total risk agreement whereby, unless you have deliberately tried to defraud them, they will cover the cost in the event that they end up in court and lose the case. You need to check beforehand. It now starts to get a little messy. If you end up in court you may be asked if a courtesy car was offered and why you didn’t accept it. The advice is that you should tell the credit hire company if you are offered a courtesy car (you may be asked in court why it was essential to have a like for like car as opposed to a small courtesy car).

If you are not able to use the hire car during the period that your car is being repaired, for example if you are on holiday or you are unable to drive through injury or illness then the claim for that period could be thrown out. Here is another strange twist. Credit hire is known to be the most expensive way to finance a rental car. If you walked into a daily rental company and rented the same car it could cost up to £200 less per day but to do this you would be expected to pay in advance for the rental.

So as the accident wasn’t your fault why would you take this route, surely it must be down to the other party’s insurance company to pay the rental costs direct? Wrong. If it can be shown in court that that you had the resources to pay for the replacement car at the lower rate the court could find in favour of the insurance company for the difference. And it gets worse, supposing the car was a write off. How long would you be entitled to a Credit Hire car for? Most would assume from the time you had the accident to the time you receive the payout.

Some might argue, but not be successfully, that you need the hire car to drive around to inspect potential replacement cars. However, again, rather bizarrely, if it can be shown that you could have afforded to pay for a replacement you may not be entitled to claim for more than say a ‘reasonable’ 2 weeks. The expression used by the courts is ‘impecunious’ when you don’t have the funds to pay for a replacement in the case of a write off or pay for cheaper daily rental if your car is being repaired. So beware if you have a few quid in the bank.

Finally, there is the ‘upsell’. Only ever consider an upsell if the Credit Hire company doesn’t have a direct replacement and won’t charge a higher rate for the better car. Let’s say your car is a 3 Series BMW but because the Credit Hire company has no 3 Series available they suggest they provide a 5 Series. Check that they will still charge the 3 Series rate and don’t fall for the supplier saying that you don’t have to worry if the rate is higher as the other party’s insurance company will be paying.

They probably won’t. In summary only take a Credit Hire car if you are absolutely confident that it won’t result in you paying all or part of the bill. For your information you can check Nationwide Credit Hire Rates by clicking here. Incidentally to put this into perspective Zamir’s Credit Hire charge was over £6,000!!! By Graham Hill