Have you ever borrowed a van and driven it without thinking about whether or not you are insured to drive it? In the UK if you do not have insurance to specifically drive that vehicle then you are driving without insurance, you are driving illegally.

If you are planning on driving a van that you do not own then you need to make sure that you have the proper insurance in place. Many people falsely believe that their own insurance will cover them to drive another vehicle. Many van owners think that their policy will allow others to drive their van.

The problem is that most policies do not cover you to drive another persons van. There are exceptions to this and that is if you borrow someone else's vehicle then they will have to add you onto their annual policy as an additional driver. This can be expensive and time consuming if you are borrowing the van infrequently or even just for one day.

The legal solution to this is to get a temporary van insurance policy, this will cover you up to 28 days to drive another van. You can specifically get cover for just one day or up to a total of 28 consecutive days. You can generally up to three temporary policies in a year and they can follow on consecutively giving you up to 3 months of cover.

Many people choose to borrow a van from a friend or from the company that they work for. You may want to use it to help you move home or take a load of rubbish to the local refuse centre as it will save lots of individual trips in the car.

Maybe you are considering buying a new van and need to test drive it, either for yourself or on behalf of a business that you work for. You may then need to drive the van home or back to the business after you have purchased it

Whatever reason you need to ensure that you are properly insured to drive on UK roads. If you get stopped by the police pleading ignorance is not going to help you and you are likely to get a fine and points on your license. You are then going to have to get insurance to get the van back anyway as the police will not let you drive it off.

Consider the implications if you are involved in a road traffic accident, being stopped by the police may be a mercy compared to the trouble you will get into if you cause an accident without the proper insurance. Not only will you not have insurance to replace the van or get it fixed if someone is injured or killed you may face financial ruin and a custodial sentence.