If there's insurance on your car at the moment, there's every chance it is still around. Why insure a car if it has been scrapped? The only time this may be the case is if someone has paid for a year's insurance up front, subsequently written the car off and not cancelled the insurance.
There's a great online insurance checker that you can see if insurance exists for a particular vehicle. Head over to
and you'll see a form asking for your registration plate details:
Type your registration plate into the yellow box, tick both the Data Protection box and the "I'm not a robot" box and voila - you should find out if the registration plate has any insurance.
If there's insurance in place, you'll see something like this:
And if not, something like this:
So if it's insured - great news - it's probably still on the road. If it's not insured, don't fret. Cars can be garaged for a number of reasons - they might be SORNed, being worked on or perhaps the owner can't afford insurance.
Also note that we have very rarely seen examples of cars that have been scrapped many years ago but seem to still have valid insurance - so don't take this information as 100% accurate, although it is a generally a very good indicator.
- Track Your Vehicle Down
- The British Newspaper Archive
- The British Newspaper Archive - Continued
- Is Your Car Still Insured?
- The DVLA Websites: Look Up Your Car
- Your DVLA Car Records
- SORNed Or Scrapped Car?
- Commercial Vehicle Reports
- What The Car Data Looks Like
- How Many Left
- Use RegArchive And VRegs In Depth To Trace Cars
- Contacting The DVLA For Car Information