AXA Fixes 82 Percent of Breakdowns at the Roadside, Allianz Just 42 Percent

The gap between breakdown providers is bigger than the price tag

More than 5.5 million British drivers broke down in 2025, according to new data compiled by What Car?, up by close to 1.8 million on the year before. Sixteen per cent of the UK’s cars needed roadside recovery last year, against 10.9 per cent in 2024. Almost every driver who pays for cover assumes that a breakdown means a patrol arrives, fixes the fault, and sends them on their way. The data shows that assumption depends entirely on which company’s sticker is in your window.

What Car?’s survey found that AXA fixed 82 per cent of the vehicles its patrols attended at the roadside, the highest rate of any provider tested. Allianz managed just 42 per cent. A driver with Allianz cover is, on this evidence, roughly twice as likely to be towed away, left waiting for a second visit, or stuck arranging a courtesy car than a driver who happened to pick AXA. Both sets of customers are paying for the same promise: that a fault gets fixed at the roadside wherever possible.

Who is being left stranded

Breakdown cover is sold almost entirely on price and add-ons, home-start, onward travel, key cover, and rarely on the one figure that actually determines whether a driver gets moving again quickly: the roadside fix rate. AA pricing for 2026 starts from £49 a year, RAC from £47, and Green Flag from £27. None of those headline prices tell a buyer whether a patrol is likely to fix their car there and then or radio for a flatbed.

The industry-wide numbers in the What Car? data are not all bad. Recovery firms as a group reached 61 per cent of breakdowns within an hour in 2025, up from 56 per cent the year before, and 57 per cent of drivers were able to carry on with their journey after assistance, up from 48 per cent in 2024. Response times and overall resolution are improving. But the gap between the best and worst individual providers has not closed, and it is the individual driver, not the industry average, who is left standing on the hard shoulder waiting for a second van.

Potholes are doing some of the damage

A large share of last year’s breakdowns did not come from worn-out batteries or flat tyres caused by ordinary wear. Pothole-related damage to suspension, wheels and shock absorbers accounted for 26,048 RAC call-outs in 2025, up 15 per cent on 2024. That figure sits inside the wider breakdown total and points to a second driver of the crisis: a road network that is causing mechanical failures faster than councils are repairing it, on top of an ageing national car fleet that is more likely to fail regardless of the road surface.

What Car?’s consumer editor, Claire Evans, said breakdown cover “can be pricey, but it’s worth bearing in mind that a good recovery technician could repair your car for free at the roadside if it breaks down, potentially saving you a hefty garage bill.” She added that a cheaper local plan can be the most cost-effective solution for drivers who do not often cover long distances, while a national policy suits high-milers better, and urged drivers to read the small print carefully so it suits their needs.

Marketing claims and independent testing do not match

Several major providers publish their own fix-rate figures, and those numbers sit close together. The AA states it repairs eight out of 10 vehicles at the roadside and arrives within an hour on average. RAC says its patrols fix around 80 per cent of breakdowns. Those self-reported figures suggest a market where most large providers perform at a comparable level. What Car?’s independent survey tells a different story once the full range of providers, not just the two most visible names, is tested side by side. Allianz’s 42 per cent fix rate sits nowhere near the 80 per cent range the market leaders quote for themselves, yet a driver comparing prices on a comparison site has no easy way to see that difference before they buy.

What a failed roadside fix actually costs

A breakdown that gets fixed at the roadside typically costs the driver nothing beyond their annual premium. One that does not costs far more than the ticket price of the policy suggests. A car that has to be flatbedded to a garage usually means a diagnostic fee, a labour charge, and parts, on top of whatever arrangement the provider makes for onward travel. Drivers without a courtesy car included in their policy can end up paying for a hire car out of their own pocket while their vehicle sits in a queue at an independent garage, with many franchised dealers booking routine work weeks in advance.

That gap between a policy that fixes the fault and one that simply moves the car somewhere else is exactly where the difference between an 82 per cent and a 42 per cent fix rate becomes a financial one, not just an inconvenience. A driver who is towed twice in a year on a lower-performing policy could face several hundred pounds in costs that a higher fix-rate provider would have avoided entirely by getting the car moving on the roadside the first time.

Councils share the blame for the pothole share of breakdowns

The 26,048 pothole-related call-outs recorded by the RAC in 2025 sit on top of years of complaints from motoring organisations that local authorities are not resurfacing roads fast enough to keep pace with damage. Every one of those call-outs represents a driver whose suspension, wheel or shock absorber failed from a road surface fault rather than any error on their part, and who then had to rely on their breakdown provider’s fix rate to get moving again. A driver on a low-performing policy who hits a pothole is effectively exposed twice: once by the state of the road, and again by a recovery provider less likely to repair the resulting damage at the roadside.

How to fight back before your renewal lands

A breakdown policy is one of the few products drivers renew year after year without ever testing whether it still represents value: most people are lucky enough to rarely use it. That makes the moment of renewal the only real opportunity to check whether a provider is worth the price being asked.

• Ask for the fix rate, not just the price. Before renewing or switching, search for independent breakdown cover comparisons from What Car?, Which? or Auto Express, which test roadside repair rates rather than relying on providers marking their own homework.
• Match the policy to how you actually drive. A cheaper local-only plan suits drivers who rarely travel far from home; a full national policy with onward travel and home-start is worth the extra cost for high-mileage drivers or older, less reliable cars.
• Check what happens after a failed fix. Ask your provider directly what its policy is if a patrol cannot repair your car at the roadside: how quickly a flatbed or replacement vehicle is provided, and whether a courtesy car is included as standard or costs extra.
• Report a pattern of failures. If you are towed away, not fixed, on repeated occasions, that is grounds for a formal complaint to the provider and, if unresolved, to the Financial Ombudsman Service, as breakdown cover sold as an insurance product falls within its remit.
• Reduce your own risk of a pothole-related breakdown. Check tyre pressure and condition monthly, avoid swerving hard to dodge potholes at speed, which causes more suspension damage than driving through them at a controlled speed, and report damaged road surfaces to your local council so repairs are logged.

None of this requires drivers to accept a fault as bad luck. The difference between an 82 per cent and a 42 per cent roadside fix rate is not a marginal statistic, it is the difference between getting to work that day and losing it entirely, and it is a difference that only becomes visible once someone tests providers independently rather than reading what they say about themselves.

Sources:

• What Car? breakdown survey findings, reported by The Irish News
• Motoring Chronicle: Road damage caused 71 breakdowns every day in 2025