A BOAT (byway open to all traffic) is a road, same as the M1, its just one that is not tarmacked  or maintained the same.

What you say is true however a lot of insurance companies will consider this "off roading" or "greenlaning".

http://www.cityam.com/1415209314/take-boat-through-countryside

Fingers crossed the OP's insurance covers him.

That does bring back memories for us. In east Germany in  a lovely village  where they were celebrating the Easter festival with trees festooned with coloured eggs. Now to get back to Dresdon, set TOM TOM sat nav and away we went. Bit later the road narrowed and then to a track. Sat nav showed road as ok so carried on . Now in a forest and still sat nav said carry on , thinking it would open soon to a proper road. It now got to a track where we stopped this was ridicoulase . Bit later a forest ranger came up the path and the look on his face , how could these mad English come here. With much gesturing we managed to do a hundred point turn and got back where we started from.LOL.

Jeez. Sorry to hear about this. Barely had my VRS a month and if I did anything like that I'm not sure I would recover. Hate to say this but I reckon the insurance will more than likely put it down to lack of driver judgement? I too have dropped a you know what with a sat nav but nothing as serious as that. Agreed that you shouldn't trust them. I bet your kicking yourself now for taking that earlier turn. "If only I'd carried on" springs to mind.

 

I hope you get it sorted. Let us know how you get on. All the best.

What you say is true however a lot of insurance companies will consider this "off roading" or "greenlaning".

http://www.cityam.com/1415209314/take-boat-through-countryside

Fingers crossed the OP's insurance covers him.

As someone who has owned various Land rovers and toyota land cruisers I am fully aware of the insurance issues on BOATS but a I said its a road, one that you need motor insurance to drive down, its not offroading it is a road just an unmade one. 

 

That said if I was the op I would put the insurance claim in more in hope than expectation 

I presume the car's worth enough for them to not write it off with that quote then... an older model, you might be skirting dangerously close to their limit, usually 70% of the value if memory serves me correctly?

The 3500 is not the end of it, there will now also be a loss of NCB and increased premiums for 5 years. They may instead, as above, deny the payout and do the second part anyway. You'll be going dangerously close to write off territory too, I'd imagine. Which would be a bloody stupid reason to lose the car. For the kind of money involved, for mere cosmetics, I'd just live with it as a life lesson.

£3564 for paintwork?

Are they spraying it in 9ct gold?

Moral of the story.... dont spend a lot of money on a new car when you are the kind of person who will mistreat it and get upset when it gets damaged.

 

Personally, I spend less on an older higher miled car with average wear and tear and imperfect wheels but still looks good at a casual glimpse(shop windows etc :p ), then when i do kerb, scuff, knock, scratch, dent or whatever it it doesnt mean anything and although frustrating you soon forget about it.

 

Also, dont drive down inappropriate roads.

Sorry for your costs and damage but you drive the car not the Sat Nav.

 

It's all to easy to blindly follow instruction from the little black box.

Going to have to be done on the insurance as no other option at the cost being estimated. Lucky that no dented panels, only paint.

In hindsight I should have abandoned the car and come back later in the afternoon in the daylight and reversed it out with my friends help rather than try to continue out the other end. But my brain doesn't exactly function all that well well at 5 am and usually wakes up around 9 am on a normal day.

Lesson learned but in a very expensive way.

 

Jesus fella, thats a whole lot for paint!! take it to an Independent reputable body repair place, they charge less as its bread and butter and all they do, plus no mark up from dealers!! and do you really care about body warranty thats not worth the paper its written on anyway? Skoda wanted £230 to respray my rear spoiler, which i actually got done in the exact colour, in 2 days, baked in an oven and with aerospace grade lacquer on it so a much better finish than standard... for £80 

 

I seriously doubt you have 3 grands worth of damage and any good body shop will be able to walk around your car and give you a rough idea how much it would cost to repair it.. 

Edited 10 March, 201511 yr by Dread1977

Jesus fella, thats a whole lot for paint!! take it to an Independent reputable body repair place, they charge less as its bread and butter and all they do, plus no mark up from dealers!! and do you really care about body warranty thats not worth the paper its written on anyway? Skoda wanted £230 to respray my rear spoiler, which i actually got done in the exact colour, in 2 days, baked in an oven and with aerospace grade lacquer on it so a much better finish than standard... for £80

I seriously doubt you have 3 grands worth of damage and any good body shop will be able to walk around your car and give you a rough idea how much it would cost to repair it..

Maybe that's the 'insurance quote'

I would have laughed all the way back home if i got a quote like that, insurers and dealers always take the proverbial PxxS

Maybe that's the 'insurance quote'

Aah, of course! after a bloke sideswiped me while I was stationary, I got a large dent panel beaten out the side (old school repairer! ) and the whole car resprayed for less than £2k five years ago, it can't have gone up that much?! Gave the insurance company three quotes from dealers or similar to get it, mind.

 

(thinking about it, the bloke who did it said that everyone else is expensive cos they train monkeys to cut & weld new panels in nowadays as it's quicker and doesn't require much training... the art of panel beating is being lost!)

Edited 10 March, 201511 yr by blackspaven

any picture of the car?

Sorry to hear about the damage but I can't understand why you couldn't reverse out considering that you'd driven down there (so there was obviously room). It may have been dark but them mirrors are there for a reason (especially with the reverse lights lighting things up, I've even used the rear fogs for some extra light in the past). I'd even open the window and hang my head out, if your close enough on the drivers side to the rocks/branches chances are there's enough room on the passenger side to miss everything you've just driven past.

 

Cost to repair also seems ridiculous, it cant be that bad surely.

Sorry to hear this,when i first bought a garmin sat nav many years ago i used my new toy when we were driving to Pembroke to catch a ferry for ireland,ive done the journey a few times & my new toy told me to go straight on at a junction where id normally turn left......big mistake,it took us down every back road going & we only just made the ferry    (we normally get there a hour or two before).......hindsight is a wonderfull thing...hope you get your new car all sorted.

Is there an option on the sat nav to not choose the shortest route ?

Pick the most "economical route" as opposed to shortest. That will take you through main roads.

My Focus ST has the following options - shortest, economical or fastest. Taking the shortest route has ****ed me up in some occasions too - like getting off the main road to cut through a back street only to come back out on the same main road. WTF??

Haven't really played with the sat nav on the vRS to date. Will check it out and report back.

An folk wonder why insurance is so expensive!.

Making that kind of mistake, should not be for the insurance to put right.

Experience costs, or it should.

regards

Marcus

Sat nav is a wonderful thing but it will never surpass the Mk 1 human brain connected to a pair of eyes looking out of the front window.

 

If the OP is so keen on off-roading, why on earth does he drive a vRS? Wouldn't something (anything) with a bit more ground clearance be right for the job?

An folk wonder why insurance is so expensive!.

Making that kind of mistake, should not be for the insurance to put right.

Experience costs, or it should.

regards

Marcus

If insurance didn't pay for all the vehicle damage that really isn't an "accident" then they'd only be making half the payouts.  eg: WTF is insurance doing paying for new motors when people put petrol in their diesel?

 

I feel sorry for the OP as he was following the device in good faith.  It was dark and he probably wasn't fully awake.  It's all very well for us keyboard warriors to be experts after the fact but I think a few of us might have done the same thing.

 

This thread really is useless without photos & I think the price quote is outrageous.  I would have thought you could buff the paint & buy a 2nd hand set of alloys to get the car back to "reasonable" condition.

Comprehensive Insurance does cover accidental damage actually.

You're wrong I'm afraid.

I feel sorry for the OP as he was following the device in good faith. It was dark and he probably wasn't fully awake

I don't think that's something he'll be admitting to

If he wasn't fully awake he shouldn't have been driving in the first place

Guys .. what happens if there is heavy rain and the road in front of you is flooded.  You can clearly see it is flooded but you need to get home and you need to cross the rising water.

 

So you drive across said rising water and car gets washed away.  Do you think insurance will cover you ? I think you'll find the answer is yes.

 

Not same but similar.  Yes the driver had a choice but they made the wrong one in both scenarios - they are both ACCIDENTS.

If you fall asleep and cause an accident, insurance covers you too ... unless your blood alcohol is over your prescribed limit of course [0.05 in Aust for a full license]