How to check if a car has been written off

The Written-Off Vehicle Register (WOVR) is part of NEVDIS, the national vehicle database maintained by Austroads for the state and territory registration authorities. When an insurer, a loss assessor, a dealer, a dismantler or an auction house assesses a vehicle as written off, it must report the vehicle to the register.

Each record classifies the vehicle as a statutory write-off or a repairable write-off, and carries codes describing the incident, the location of the damage and its severity. Records from every state appear on the national register, and a state cannot remove a record created by another.

The register is not an accident history. A car that was crashed, repaired privately and never assessed by an insurer will not be on it. It records write-off assessments, not collisions.

1. Get the VIN from the compliance plate, the windscreen or the registration papers. The register is searched by VIN, not by plate.
2. Run a PPSR motor vehicle search on the VIN at ppsr.gov.au for $2.00, or use a plate-based check that converts the rego first.
3. Open the certificate and find the written-off section inside the NEVDIS vehicle details.
4. If a record exists, note whether it is statutory or repairable, the date, the state that recorded it and the incident, location and severity codes.
5. Decode the codes using the table below, then ask the seller for the repair invoices and the state inspection paperwork if the write-off is repairable.
6. Have the car inspected by an independent mechanic with the write-off record in hand, so the inspector knows where to look.

A statutory write-off is a vehicle assessed as too badly damaged to be repaired safely. It also covers damage the rules define as statutory, such as being burnt out, submerged or stripped. A statutory write-off cannot be re-registered anywhere in Australia. It can only be sold for parts or scrap.

A repairable write-off is a vehicle the insurer chose not to repair, usually because the repair cost more than the car was worth, but which can be made roadworthy. Depending on the state it may be repaired, inspected and re-registered. New South Wales has barred the re-registration of most repairable write-offs since 2011.

The distinction appears on the certificate as the write-off type. If the certificate says statutory, the car cannot legally return to the road and the sale should stop there.

The certificate prints the codes without explanation. The incident type code tells you what happened; the location and severity codes tell you where and how badly.

• Location codes run from 1 to 46 and map to areas of the vehicle; 42 to 46 apply to NSW heavy vehicles only
• Severity codes run from A to P; L means salt water, M means fresh water and E means unrepairable
• A hail write-off with light severity is a different purchase from a flood or structural impact write-off

A statutory write-off is final everywhere. The rules for repairable write-offs differ by state, and they apply at the point of re-registration.

• NSW: repairable write-offs have not been re-registrable since 2011, apart from narrow exceptions such as hail damage, inherited vehicles and vehicles owned for 28 days before the incident
• Queensland: re-registration after a safety certificate and a Written-off Vehicle Inspection (WOVI)
• Victoria: a Vehicle Identity Validation (VIV) inspection plus a roadworthy certificate before re-registration
• Western Australia: repair receipts, photos and a written-off vehicle inspection before relicensing
• South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT: an identity or repair inspection before re-registration; in Tasmania the registration is suspended until a Transport Inspector clears it

The WOVR only holds vehicles assessed as write-offs by someone obliged to report. Accident repairs paid for privately, or crashes on uninsured cars, leave no trace on it. The free NSW rego check's yearly odometer readings can hint at a gap, but no register lists repairs.

For that reason a clean written-off result should be read with an inspection, not instead of one. Look for mismatched paint, non-factory welds, replaced airbags and new glass on an older car.

Our WOVR check returns the written-off record with every code decoded, by rego or VIN, from $12.95 with the $2 government certificate attached.

Check a car on the Written-Off Vehicle Register