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Claiming as a passenger in Scotland — when the driver is a friend or relative

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Personal injury

Claiming as a passenger in Scotland

A passenger almost never causes the collision, which makes this the most straightforward claim in road traffic law and the one people are most reluctant to bring. The reluctance is usually founded on a misunderstanding about who actually pays.

RFPublished by Rooney Family Law Limited, solicitors, regulated by the Law Society of Scotland · Last reviewed 14th August 2026

The short version

If you were injured while being carried in a vehicle, someone else was almost certainly at fault: the driver of your vehicle, the driver of another, or both. You claim against whoever was to blame. Their compulsory motor insurance pays, because section 145(3)(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 requires the policy to cover liability for death or bodily injury to any person arising out of the use of the vehicle. A passenger is any person.

You do not need to prove which of the two drivers was at fault before you start. If both were, they are liable jointly and severally, and section 3 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1940 leaves them to sort out the proportions between themselves. The injured passenger recovers in full and takes no part in that argument.

When the driver is a friend, a partner or a parent

This is the objection that stops most passenger claims before they start, and it rests on a false premise. You are not asking your friend for money. You are making a claim that their insurer is contractually and statutorily obliged to meet, and which they pay a premium every year precisely so that it can be met.

The driver does not write the cheque. The insurer investigates, negotiates and pays. The driver’s practical involvement is usually limited to reporting the accident, which the policy obliges them to do in any event.

What it does and does not affect

A claim will normally affect the driver’s no claims discount and their premium at renewal, in the same way that any other claim on the policy would. It does not expose them personally to the damages. It is a real cost to them and an honest conversation is worth having, but it is not the ruinous personal liability people imagine.

There is no rule of Scots law preventing a claim between family members, spouses, cohabitants or friends, and no exclusion in a standard motor policy for injury to a passenger who happens to be related to the driver. The insurance is compulsory precisely because the legislature intended injured people to be paid.

You cannot be told you accepted the risk

There is a specific statutory answer to the argument that a passenger consented to the danger. Section 149 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 provides that any antecedent agreement or understanding between driver and passenger is of no effect so far as it purports to negative or restrict the liability that section 145 requires to be insured, and that the fact a person carried in the vehicle has willingly accepted as their own the risk of negligence on the part of the driver “shall not be treated as negativing any such liability”.

Section 149(4) extends this to a person entering, getting on to or alighting from the vehicle. So a notice in the car, a joke before setting off, or an understanding that the driver was inexperienced cannot be turned into a defence. The doctrine of volenti non fit injuria is closed off by statute in this situation.

What is not closed off is contributory negligence, which reduces damages instead of defeating them. That is a different argument and it is dealt with next.

Where a passenger’s damages can be reduced

Three situations recur, and in each the effect is a percentage deduction from the whole award rather than a refusal to pay. The power comes from section 1(1) of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945, applied to Scotland by section 5, and the size of the deduction is fixed by the court on the evidence.

The first is a seat belt not worn. The requirement for adults is in regulations made under the Road Traffic Act 1988, and an insurer will argue that a belt would have reduced or prevented the injury. The argument only succeeds to the extent the medical evidence supports it: if the injury would have happened anyway, there is no deduction.

The second is accepting a lift from a driver the passenger knew to be unfit, most often through drink. The passenger is not blamed for the collision but for exposing themselves to a risk they appreciated. Whether the argument works depends on what the passenger actually knew, which is a question of evidence rather than of assumption.

The third is behaviour in the vehicle: distracting the driver, riding in a load space, or being carried in a way the vehicle was not built for.

If the vehicle you were in had no insurance

A passenger in an uninsured vehicle is not automatically shut out, but this is the one place where a passenger’s own knowledge can defeat the claim outright rather than reduce it. Under the Motor Insurers’ Bureau’s Uninsured Drivers Agreement 2015, the Bureau is not liable to a claimant who knew or had reason to believe that the vehicle had been stolen or unlawfully taken, or that it was being used without a policy of insurance in force.

The test is what you had reason to believe

It is not limited to actual knowledge. A passenger who got into a car they had reason to believe was uninsured or taken without consent may recover nothing from the Bureau. Where the driver was uninsured but the passenger neither knew nor had reason to believe it, the claim proceeds normally. The detail is on claiming against an uninsured or untraced driver.

Taxis, private hire and buses

The analysis does not change because you paid for the journey. A taxi or private hire vehicle must be insured for the carriage of passengers, and a claim runs against the driver or operator at fault in the ordinary way. Where the injury arises on a bus or coach, the additional questions are usually about the operator’s own duties as well as the driver’s, and that is dealt with on claiming after a bus or coach accident.

How long you have

Three years, under section 17 of the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, running from the accident or from the later date of knowledge defined in section 17(2)(b).

Passengers who were children

Children are carried far more often than they drive, so this arises constantly. Section 17(3) disregards time spent under legal disability by reason of nonage, and in Scotland nonage ends at sixteen under sections 1(1)(b) and 1(2) of the Age of Legal Capacity (Scotland) Act 1991. A child passenger therefore ordinarily has until age 19, not the twenty-first that United Kingdom-wide articles describe. That is the ordinary case. The three-year period can start later where the relevant facts were not known, under section 17(2)(b), and section 19A is a contested application to the court rather than a safety net to plan around.

A parent may raise the action on the child’s behalf before then, and where the injury is serious there are good reasons to do so rather than wait.

What a passenger’s claim is worth

The same way as any other Scottish injury claim, and emphatically not by the English tariff. Part 1 of the Civil Liability Act 2018, which created the fixed whiplash tariff, extends to England and Wales only under section 13(1). A passenger’s neck or back injury in Scotland is assessed individually as solatium, with patrimonial loss for wages, treatment, care and travel on top. How much compensation could I get explains how the two parts fit together.

Most passenger claims are worth not more than £25,000 and therefore fall within the compulsory pre-action protocol introduced by the Act of Sederunt (Sheriff Court Rules Amendment) (Personal Injury Pre-Action Protocol) 2016, which sets the timetable the insurer must keep to. The protocol does not apply where the accident or other circumstance giving rise to liability occurred before 28th November 2016, or where the claimant is not represented by a solicitor. The £25,000 figure fixes the scope of the compulsory protocol rather than an absolute ceiling: under paragraph 4, where the estimate rises above it the claimant must tell the defender, and the parties may agree to carry on following the protocol voluntarily.

Sources

This page is general information about the law of Scotland and is not advice on your circumstances. Time limits are strict and the consequences of missing one cannot be undone. Take advice on your own case.