DriveSmartBC - Allow Unlicensed Minor to Drive
 

I have a question. A friend of mine let his 13 year old daughter drive his car on the streets of our town! What are the implications if they got caught and/or if she got in an accident?

As one might expect, this is an offence against the Motor Vehicle Act. The Act simply says that anyone having possession or control of a motor vehicle and permits an unlicensed minor to drive it commits an offence.

What one might not stop to consider is that if this child caused a collision it could result in financial ruin for the parent. The Insurance (Vehicle) Act allows a claim to be denied if the insured violates a term or condition of the plan. One of the terms of your Autoplan insurance is that the driver must be properly licensed.

At the least the parent who owns the vehicle would have to pay to repair damage to the vehicle. At worst the parent would have to pay the entire bill for damage and injury caused to other property, vehicles and people involved in the collision. When we consider that it is routine to buy a million dollars of third party liability coverage today it is easy to imagine that the financial loss would be devastating.

In view of these facts it can be seen that this is a very poor decision on the part of the parent.

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I put that right up there with adults who ride motorcycles with small children sitting on ther gas tank in front of the rider. Illegal and incredibly dangerous. In case of even a minor swerve or braking situation, it will guarantee that the kid gets hurt or killed & so does the rider.

So, just to clarify, if a person with an L were driving and got into an accident, the insurance would then be void because said driver was not licensed properly, correct?

Say it was a minor accident like the 13 year old hit a parked car's bumper, so say less than 5K of damage,
What are we looking at then?

Said parents are still on the hook for the whole amount as well as being charged with child endangerment etc....

If that person was driving without their class 5 & over 25yr old supervisor, most likely. It would be an ICBC decision in the end though. As a police officer attending a similar scene, I've issued the L driver with several tickets.

That's a shade of gray that I can't answer. The person does have a license, but they are disobeying terms of the license, perhaps not the terms of the insurance contract. We'd have to check with ICBC ( feedback@icbc.com ) or an Autoplan Agent for an answer to that one.

What Skidmark said. take a few moments to read the back of your ICBC registration. Look at what it says in the red box about "use by persons not authorized etc...may invalidate the certificate." In lawyerspeak this means that ICBC may not honour your coverage if you break the law. Given the fact that they sue people for false claims on a regular basis what do you figure the odds would be for them to pay your claim if you deliberately chose to break the law when they had warned you in red letters on your insurance policy?

I just looked at the back of the temp policy and either I missed it, or it just doesn't say it. But it's not something I was planning on doing, I was having a discussion with one of my roommates about it and he said ICBC would still cover any accidents, which didn't make any sense to me. So I figured I would ask here and see, since most of the time you guys have a lot of really useful information.

Thank you Skidmark, I'll email them and ask :)

It will be on the back of your regular registration sheet.

What he may mean is that ICBC will still pay out to the victim, but they will deny to the driver/owner and then sue the driver/owner to recover what was paid out to look after the victim.