How To Check By VIN If The Car Got Into An Accident

2023 Author: Natalie MacDonald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 03:54

It is rare for a car to avoid traffic accidents in its lifetime. However, most of the cars in the secondary market are sold under the flag "not bit, not beautiful" and how to bring unscrupulous sellers to clean water? Let's figure out how not to buy a car that has been in a serious accident

A vehicle rebuilt from an accident can be a big problem, whether it is at least three times legally clean and visually attractive. An unsuccessfully straightened body, corrosion that affects repair sites and triggered passive safety systems in the future will spoil the buyer's pleasure from owning a car. And if it is a "Frankenstein", assembled from several cars, problems may arise that are more serious than knocked down wheel alignment angles - according to the law, the registration of such a car is canceled, and it cannot be operated.

However, many emergency vehicles can be excluded from the candidates for purchase even at the first stage of the search, without even leaving for an inspection.

Check history first

A person with experience in buying cars in the secondary market will probably advise you not to rush to a meeting with the seller of the car you like. Better to start by asking him for the VIN-number and "punch" it through the bases. And only then, if there is no information about past accidents in the online data, it is worth seeing the car live and diagnosing an accident in an independent service.

However, the very fact of an accident should not always be regarded as an unconditional argument for refusing to purchase. Accidents are different, and it is difficult to find an elderly car without any unpleasant episodes in his life at all. And the consequences of light collisions can be eliminated without problems. But the history of the car will tell you which places in it you need to pay special attention to when inspecting. In addition, it can be an additional argument for bargaining.

We contact the traffic police

The agency that first records the fact of an accident, usually right at the scene of the collision - traffic police. Of course, not all accidents go through it, and in the event of minor accidents, participants are increasingly bypassing the Europrotocol. And if the car ran into a stone or tree somewhere in areas remote from civilization, then the driver often understands the consequences of such an accident without the participation of traffic police and insurers at all.

But, according to various estimates, about 85 percent of accidents are recorded by the traffic police, and this allowed the department to create a large database of accidents. Everyone has access to information from it.

Checking the car on the basis of the traffic police can be done in two ways - which is preferable, you decide. The first way is to contact the traffic police department directly with a request about what accidents the car has been in. The second, the most popular, is to use the online service without leaving your home.

In both cases, you don't have to pay anything, and both have pros and cons. When contacting the traffic police in person, you need to come to the department, fill out a paper and, probably standing in line, get an answer. Long and troublesome? Perhaps, on the other hand, the answer will be to a certain extent complete, including the entire history of the car.

At first glance, communication with the online service of the traffic police does not promise such time expenditures. However, the Internet portal often "slows down", like many large resources of this kind. And most importantly, it operates with information no older than 2015. And if the car you are looking for is more than four years old, you will not be able to delve into its "youthful sins".

What do insurance companies know?

At the beginning of the two thousandth, thanks to the law on OSAGO, another, now very reliable and complete database of road accidents began to form in Russia. Information is accumulated by insurance companies in order to more accurately assess their risks. For example, the next CTP policy will be more expensive for the driver who is the culprit of an accident, due to the adjustment of the MTPL (bonus-malus coefficient).

However, the base of the PCA (Russian Union of Auto Insurers) is closed, and its data is available only for internal use by employees of insurance companies. And you will not be able to check the car on it. On the other hand, portals that provide the history of road accidents for a fee use the PCA database on a commercial basis.

Is it expensive?

In comparison with the possible losses from buying a car that has been in an accident, it is quite inexpensive. The easiest way is to use the Auto.ru service to check the history of any car. Having 197 rubles, as well as the VIN or license plate of any car, you can find out about the fact and consequences of an accident, which (or which) the dishonest seller wants to hide. If you have looked after a used car on our website, then Avto.ru checks its emergency past automatically - as a rule, within 24 hours after placing an advertisement for sale.

Moreover, you will receive this data in an understandable and convenient format: together with the date and place of the accident, Avto.ru will indicate its severity and the degree of damage to the car. For example: “Collision. Slight damage to the right side of the rear bumper, minor damage to the left side of the rear bumper. Conveniently!

Similar data can be found on the federal Autocode portal, which covers the whole of Russia. However, you will have to pay 349 rubles for a report for one car, and you can save a little only when buying data for several cars at once.

On the portal of the Moscow government, you can also enter the VIN and STS number of the car, and you will even be shown the history of its accident for free. However, this is a regional service and data is available only for Moscow and the Moscow region. If an accident happened outside the capital region, you will not see information about it. And there are no details about the accidents on this portal. With what it was - with a bush in the yard or with a KamAZ on the highway, it remains unclear.

Should I pay or not?

Free resources can save you a small amount of money, but are not as detailed and often slow down. And the amount that paid services ask for, against the background of the price of the car and the possible expenses for correcting hidden defects, does not seem so significant.

Our service has one more useful function - it works in a smartphone application, which means that checking the car history will always be at hand. What for? To use it right "at the hood" - scammers are afraid of automatic checks of Auto.ru and often try to cheat, indicating in the ad not the real VIN of the car, but a fake one from another, but similar car. Therefore - be careful!