If you are putting petrol in a diesel car then the odds are that you will need to call the Wrong Fuel recovery service. This is because, in theory, it is possible for a car to run on petrol but to run without petrol being used is virtually impossible. Diesel engines have different construction than petrol engines and so cannot be put together and filled in the same way.
So, what do you do when you have an emergency like petrol in a diesel car by mistake and drove it? In theory, you can pump both tanks full to make both cars run but this would be very dangerous and therefore an act that might end up costing you dearly. What you do instead is put the cars in neutral and have a member of your roadside assistance team pump both tanks full.
The reasoning behind this is that if the cars were not neutral then what would happen if one of them was to leak some drain contaminated fuel. This would be catastrophic as you would need to tow both cars back to the place where the roadside assistance team was located.
Another scenario that could unfold would see you needing to pump the spare tyre and then plug the spare tire into the petrol system so that it could continue to work. Again, this would be disastrous as you would need to have the correct type of roadside assistance member at your side at all times. What would happen if you had no roadside assistance team available at all and this is what happens when you do not have the right type of breakdown cover.
You would be stranded on the side of the road with your vehicle in the ditch. This would result in you having to pay out for expensive tow repairs or towing costs as well as possibly losing out on any compensation benefits which are due to you under the Road Traffic Accident Act.
However, apart from these scenarios, your vehicle can run without any fuel or no fuel system at all which could also lead to you needing the wrong type of breakdown cover. If your car runs out of fuel even for a short period because of misfuelling, you could be faced with the prospect of losing out on your no-fault insurance. No-fault insurance usually pays out if the owner of the car is not covered by their no-fault policy due to incidents such as misfuelling.
Several different scenarios could unfold and would mean that you require the correct type of roadside assistance cover which delivers the correct level of cover. If you were involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle, you might need to ensure that there was a clean fuel system in place at the time of the collision to avoid any contamination of the entire fuel system.
If the other driver did not have an adequate type of breakdown cover and the accident was caused because of this, you could potentially lose out on the no-fault benefit if the accident did not clear enough of the contaminated fuel to enable you to safely drive your vehicle away. Therefore, you should ensure that you purchase the right fuel recovery service which will be able to clean the contaminated fuel from your car completely and ensure that it is in a position to be removed from your vehicle without any risk to you or any other road users.
