With so many cars on the roads every day accidents are simply unavoidable with car faults and driver error causing thousands of crashes each year. For insured drivers this can be less financially crippling, but a written-off car can be hard to move on and can sometimes only be fit for scrap. However, you will find unscrupulous owners and dealers that will try and hide accident damage and a cars true state through cut and shut repairs that purely mask and never fix a car’s major faults, so they can sell them to an unsuspecting buyer.

It is not illegal to sell a car that has been written off, but only if it has been repaired to a roadworthy state and is advertised as being a fully-repaired vehicle. HPI, who check whether cars have been stolen or written-off for a set fee, believe that the raft of written-off cars flooding the market is getting worse. For every thirty-three it checked in 2012 one had been classified a total write-off by its insurer; which equates to over to over six hundred vehicles per day and over twenty thousand a year. If you want to dodge buying a car that has been written-off then it is important to do the following things when buying used cars:

Know your stuff

Insurance companies tend to have four categories for the level of write-off for a car. Category A indicates that a car is only fit for scrap; whereas a Category B write-off will enable the owner to sell a lot more of the car as parts as much of it is still in reasonable condition, but neither should ever be driven as a whole car again. It is not until you get to category C and D when cars can be repaired, but with those in C costing more to repair than they were worth before the crash and category D being cheaper than the car’s worth prior to the accident

Get it fully checked over

A lot of unscrupulous sellers will go to vast lengths to cover up accidents and written-off cars. Always get a professional mechanic to give the car a thorough once-over as you may think a car looks in good condition, but a nice exterior could be masking a multitude of sins underneath

Buy from a reputable dealer

Buying used cars at reputable dealerships, like Motorpoint in London leaves you a lot safer from potential issues with written-off cars as they are forced to work under tighter regulations. If you were unaware of being sold a written-off car by an authorised dealer then you have the legal backing to get a refund or exchange as long as you can prove that the car was sold to you in an “unsatisfactory” condition.