Driving a vehicle is risky business, and doing it on the track continues to be risky, but differently. The Nürburgring is no exception, and many have crashed their cars on the world's most demanding track, which has a special status with insurance companies.
If the vehicle is not insured by a German company that has a policy that also includes the 'Ring, you may be in trouble, so check the policy carefully before driving there. Here's why.
As you may have seen before in other articles, crashing a vehicle on the Nürburgring is an expensive experience. For example, if the tow truck gets called, it needs to be paid. If traffic is stopped, the driver responsible for the accident might have to pay for everyone's trouble, and if the barrier is hit, it will be replaced at the driver's expense.
If insurance does not cover it, the owners of the track will take whoever was responsible for the accident to court, and they will eventually get paid, so do not imagine that someone could escape from the consequences of their actions here. It does not work that way, and crashing a vehicle that does not belong to you takes things to an entirely different ballpark.
YouTuber Misha Charoudin has recently published a video where he reveals that he crashed someone's BMW M4 CS on the 'Ring during their first lap together. As Misha noted, and his footage shows, the vehicle had a puncture at one of the front wheels, and then they crashed.
Now, it gets tricky legally because the vehicle's owner let Misha drive without signing any paperwork beforehand. In other words, since he had the owner's permission to drive, he was legally responsible as a driver for the driving part, but the damage could have been the owner's responsibility, as he had let someone else drive their vehicle.
The above paragraph is not legal advice, and we are not lawyers, so it is just a simplified explanation of how things work in many countries. Depending on where the crash happened, if there were other vehicles involved, if the police were called, and the insurance policy that the vehicle had, the liability for the crash could have been the driver's responsibility, the owner's, or even both – it depends on too many factors to have a universally accepted answer.
Misha has explained that he can think of dozens of situations where the driver just let the owner fit the bill and then walked away. Instead, he decided not to let Andrew, the vehicle's owner, leave the Nürburgring with a negative experience and a damaged vehicle on a flatbed. Therefore, the YouTuber offered to pay for the repair.
Initially, Misha thought that the entire thing was going to cost him a couple of thousand euros, as he had seen similar crashes and had an idea of what to expect from a cost perspective.
Well, it did not go that way. Instead, just the barrier replacement was priced at EUR 2,500 (around $2,590), while the costs for the vehicle were initially estimated at EUR 27,000 ($27,942). This would be the perfect place to fit the meme that writes "that escalated quickly."
Moreover, Misha even offered to buy the vehicle from the owner, so that he would not find himself in the situation of having to sell it later at a diminished price because it had been damaged and repaired. The owner said no, and the repairs continued as scheduled.
With Andrew's blessing, Misha then went on to add various performance parts to enhance the M4 CS that he was paying to repair. If that does not restore just a bit of your faith in humanity, or at least in car YouTubers, I do not know what will.
Misha did the right thing here from all possible perspectives, and he deserves mad respect just for that. You can watch him tell the entire story of the crash, as well as the story of the repairs, in the video below. Furthermore, you can watch Misha and Andrew as they take the M4 CS out on the track yet again, but this time with multiple mods.
Back in the real world, someone called me the other day to inquire about a vehicle that I had posted for sale. They asked if the insurance was still valid, and I replied yes, because it is, but I mentioned that they should get their own before driving off in the car, as I cannot be responsible for them.
They were not happy with my proposition and said that times are tough, and it is expensive to get insurance these days, and asked if maybe I could wait for the policy that I paid for to expire, and then they would get one themselves.
I declined, and I advise you to do the same whenever a person you do not know wants to drive your vehicle on your insurance policy, as not all people are like Misha.
As you may have seen before in other articles, crashing a vehicle on the Nürburgring is an expensive experience. For example, if the tow truck gets called, it needs to be paid. If traffic is stopped, the driver responsible for the accident might have to pay for everyone's trouble, and if the barrier is hit, it will be replaced at the driver's expense.
If insurance does not cover it, the owners of the track will take whoever was responsible for the accident to court, and they will eventually get paid, so do not imagine that someone could escape from the consequences of their actions here. It does not work that way, and crashing a vehicle that does not belong to you takes things to an entirely different ballpark.
YouTuber Misha Charoudin has recently published a video where he reveals that he crashed someone's BMW M4 CS on the 'Ring during their first lap together. As Misha noted, and his footage shows, the vehicle had a puncture at one of the front wheels, and then they crashed.
The above paragraph is not legal advice, and we are not lawyers, so it is just a simplified explanation of how things work in many countries. Depending on where the crash happened, if there were other vehicles involved, if the police were called, and the insurance policy that the vehicle had, the liability for the crash could have been the driver's responsibility, the owner's, or even both – it depends on too many factors to have a universally accepted answer.
Misha has explained that he can think of dozens of situations where the driver just let the owner fit the bill and then walked away. Instead, he decided not to let Andrew, the vehicle's owner, leave the Nürburgring with a negative experience and a damaged vehicle on a flatbed. Therefore, the YouTuber offered to pay for the repair.
Initially, Misha thought that the entire thing was going to cost him a couple of thousand euros, as he had seen similar crashes and had an idea of what to expect from a cost perspective.
Moreover, Misha even offered to buy the vehicle from the owner, so that he would not find himself in the situation of having to sell it later at a diminished price because it had been damaged and repaired. The owner said no, and the repairs continued as scheduled.
With Andrew's blessing, Misha then went on to add various performance parts to enhance the M4 CS that he was paying to repair. If that does not restore just a bit of your faith in humanity, or at least in car YouTubers, I do not know what will.
Misha did the right thing here from all possible perspectives, and he deserves mad respect just for that. You can watch him tell the entire story of the crash, as well as the story of the repairs, in the video below. Furthermore, you can watch Misha and Andrew as they take the M4 CS out on the track yet again, but this time with multiple mods.
They were not happy with my proposition and said that times are tough, and it is expensive to get insurance these days, and asked if maybe I could wait for the policy that I paid for to expire, and then they would get one themselves.
I declined, and I advise you to do the same whenever a person you do not know wants to drive your vehicle on your insurance policy, as not all people are like Misha.