MSE News: Drivers face soaring car insurance costs

dacouch

michaels wrote: »

Our local paper lists some court cases - generally no insurance = 8 points and a fine in the range 150-800 - hardly an incentive for a young driver to purchase a 2-3k insurance policy...

I think the sentencing for no insurance does need to be looked into, the government and insurance industry have expressed that they want to make people who drive without insurance to be as vilified by the public as drink drivers.

The real cost to the uninsured driver is if they have a fault accident and are sued for damages by the other party and / or the MIB.

Uninsured drivers add circa £48 to every motor policy issued in the UK, this is the levy to fund the MIB who pay claims as an Insurer of last resort for people / property hit by uninsured / untraced drivers

Dan_Smith

darich wrote: »

Glasgow postcode until a few years ago....not considered that low although i'd expect some others to be higher.

Glasgow postcodes can be very high risk (depending on where you live). Where do you live now out of interest? I suspect your age and no claim discount helps here too? Have a look on the forum board it's usually people from higher risk areas that have been really affected by huge premium hikes.

This makes an interesting read (unless your English):

"Scottish motorists pay significantly less than their English counterparts for car insurance, according to research published today.

Price comparison website moneysupermarket.com analysed almost 1m motor insurance quotes over 12 months and found that Scotland has seven of the 10 cheapest areas in the UK for car insurance."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2009/dec/04/cheap-car-insurance-scotland

mikey72

dacouch wrote: »

I think the sentencing for no insurance does need to be looked into, the government and insurance industry have expressed that they want to make people who drive without insurance to be as vilified by the public as drink drivers.

The real cost to the uninsured driver is if they have a fault accident and are sued for damages by the other party and / or the MIB.

Uninsured drivers add circa £48 to every motor policy issued in the UK, this is the levy to fund the MIB who pay claims as an Insurer of last resort for people / property hit by uninsured / untraced drivers

So it costs me £48 to cover a driver who doesn't pay a £3000+ premium?
That's a premium that's 15 times mine.
£48 extra
So his is really £3000 and mine is only £150.
If I pay £250, will they bring them all down to a fair amount, or are uninsured drivers a very small percentage in reality?

mikey72

Dan_Smith wrote: »

3. People who don't read their terms & conditions when they buy the insurance policy, and then complain about;

- The insurance cover isn't suitable for what they want
- Automatic renewal clause

Etc etc....

So, it's justifiable then.
"it was cheap insurance, it's in the t&c's that you'll get ripped off by auto-renewal next year"
At least you're honest enough to admit it's something to watch out for with cheap insurance, and you’re not claiming it's a wonderful benefit like others have.

dacouch

It is thought that there are 1.5m uninsured cars in the UK (It has reduced from 1.8m last year).

The database of insurance which the police use was an European Directive, like most EU directives the UK implemented it ahead of time with most other member states exceeding the time limit as it can be an expensive and complex system to set up. However the government and police embraced the new system with ANPR cameras and a change of law allowing the police to impound uninsured cars. Few other countries use ANPR cameras to check the Insurance database.

The police really like using the anpr cameras and having access to the insurance database, so hopefully the message will get through to people that they have a good chance of getting caught. As a previous poster noted, the actual punishments need looking at by the government

Percy1983

dunstonh wrote: »

How else would you price it then?

Should low risk drivers have to pay for the those that are less careful?

I had my renewal for motor insurance last month and it went down. Insurance is not going up for everyone. Its mainly high risk areas or high risk drivers that are being hit.

Personally I think there should be a level of innocent until proven guilty for young drivers.

There should be cap on new drivers if they stay within certain parameters, eg, for the first 3 years if you only driver cars up to insurance group 4 and worth no more than £2000 then the maximum insurance charge can be £1200, if a claim is made or you get points on your license all is void but until that point you are innocent.

Then to balance the equation, when a 30+ crashes hit them harder with higher premiums, not the 'I see you wrote your car off last year, that will be an extra £50 this year'

I am willing to admit the stats don't lie and as a young male I may be more likely to crash, but should I pay for a crash I haven't had yet? no.

Or how about we make the whole system simple, its my car let me chose if I want insurance or not. If it gets damaged it doesn't matter how, its my insurance, if I hit someone else and there aren't insured its there problem. Insuring everything else I own is optional so why not my car?

LilacPixie

michaels wrote: »

Our local paper lists some court cases - generally no insurance = 8 points and a fine in the range 150-800 - hardly an incentive for a young driver to purchase a 2-3k insurance policy...

I agree, My cousins son is 17, passed his test on Thursday last week. They live in Angus so a DD8 postcode. Quote to add son onto his car as occasional driver, 5k. Admittedly the car is a 1.9 diesel vectra. It really is mnd boggling when the same week there is a 19 YO caught driving without insurance and gets 6 points and a 250 fine

mikey72

Percy1983 wrote: »

Personally I think there should be a level of innocent until proven guilty for young drivers.

There should be cap on new drivers if they stay within certain parameters, eg, for the first 3 years if you only driver cars up to insurance group 4 and worth no more than £2000 then the maximum insurance charge can be £1200, if a claim is made or you get points on your license all is void but until that point you are innocent.

Then to balance the equation, when a 30+ crashes hit them harder with higher premiums, not the 'I see you wrote your car off last year, that will be an extra £50 this year'

I am willing to admit the stats don't lie and as a young male I may be more likely to crash, but should I pay for a crash I haven't had yet? no.

Or how about we make the whole system simple, its my car let me chose if I want insurance or not. If it gets damaged it doesn't matter how, its my insurance, if I hit someone else and there aren't insured its there problem. Insuring everything else I own is optional so why not my car?

Can't say I agree with you, as you might run me over as a pedestrian, but then again you may not insure your house and the chimney could fall on me. One not having insurance is an offence, the other isn't.

dacouch

Percy1983 wrote: »

Personally I think there should be a level of innocent until proven guilty for young drivers.

There should be cap on new drivers if they stay within certain parameters, eg, for the first 3 years if you only driver cars up to insurance group 4 and worth no more than £2000 then the maximum insurance charge can be £1200, if a claim is made or you get points on your license all is void but until that point you are innocent.

Then to balance the equation, when a 30+ crashes hit them harder with higher premiums, not the 'I see you wrote your car off last year, that will be an extra £50 this year'

I am willing to admit the stats don't lie and as a young male I may be more likely to crash, but should I pay for a crash I haven't had yet? no.

Or how about we make the whole system simple, its my car let me chose if I want insurance or not. If it gets damaged it doesn't matter how, its my insurance, if I hit someone else and there aren't insured its there problem. Insuring everything else I own is optional so why not my car?

It's a great idea, however it has an inherent flaw, young drivers do have a very large amount of claims which are normally far more expensive for an insurer to deal with due to them tending to cause very expensive injuries. The Insurers would either have to put everyone else's insurance up to compensate for the risk of the young drivers. Or if they cannot do this but have to implement your system there would simply be no Insurers offering cover to young drivers as they would lose money on young drivers

Arg

Insurance as it is should be scrapped entirely. As someone said on another forum, the best thing for drivers to do would be to downgrade to a cheaper car and drive uninsured until the government got the message.