MSE News: Drivers face soaring car insurance costs

Percy1983

raskazz wrote: »

However, I do not agree with removal of the use of age or gender to differentiate risk. I see absolutely no reason why young females should subsidise the insurance of idiot testosterone-fuelled teenage male drivers - and I say that as a (relatively) young male.

Not trying to be argumentative but to turn that on its head, Why should sensible young male drivers subsidise poor driving young females. There is certainly female drivers who I am safer than yet I subsidise them.

My point is it should be down to good/bad drivers split not female/male split as they are got exclusively the same thing but the current system treats them as they are.

Another big problem was people fronting, basically going on there mums insurance as a named drveri, back when I had my 1.1 many where doing this and Buying Saxo VTRs at the time, I know a lot of them ended up crashing as its a bloody quick car for a new driver.

BLT_2

wizk1 wrote: »

I don't understand how increasing premiums will combat the growing number of uninsured drivers. Surely this is just going to exacerbate the problem making the number of drivers without insurance grow exponentially. Putting a stop to these irritating and socially irresponsible claims companies won't go amiss either.

Perhaps if every car incident didn't involve the entire population of the car suffering from whiplash, including the dog and the budgie in the bird cage at the back.

Everyone whines about increasing car insurance premiums, then as soon as they have a prang they race for their collar support and book a day off to visit the doctor.

Paulgonnabedebtfree

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?

I don't know if this is still the case but there is/was one country (think it was Australia but may be wrong) where third party insurance was automatically provided just by the act of buying fuel. It was embedded into the fuel cost. This meant that the more miles you drove, the more insurance you paid (not unreasonable if all other things are equal). It also meant that more powerful cars paid more and presumably, that HGvs also paid proportionately more.
If you wanted a more comprehensive policy then that had to be sorted out as an extra with an insurer.
On the face of it, that all sounds pretty reasonable. I'm sure that people on here may find flaws in it though - not least the careful subsidising the careless (or unlucky).
Indeed, doing it via fuel consumption also penalises someone who accelerates quickly or drives faster - though this doesn't stop people doing it.
I suppose the biggest obstacle is that it would probably be state run and many people tend to feel that the state rips them off anyway.

wizk1

BLT wrote: »

Perhaps if every car incident didn't involve the entire population of the car suffering from whiplash, including the dog and the budgie in the bird cage at the back.

Everyone whines about increasing car insurance premiums, then as soon as they have a prang they race for their collar support and book a day off to visit the doctor.

You've just argued for my point really, had this "compensation culture" not have existed, there wouldn't be the scale of exaggerated whiplash claims we have today. We didn't have this problem 10 to 20 years ago.

mikey72

"It's not just the amount of accidents young drivers have that illustrates why they are worse than older drivers. Admiral found the average cost of an accident involving a 17 or 18 year old was nearly £3,500. The average cost of an accident for drivers overall is half this; £1,741."

Figures released by Admiral this year
13% of drivers aged 17 and 18 have a crash, as opposed to 6.5 % overall.

http://www.admiral.com/pressReleases/106/Shocking-record-of-young-drivers-revealed

So young drivers are twice as likely to have an accident, and it'll cost twice as much.
So the risk, to clarify what Raskazz has said, is 4x.

From figures quoted on here, the insurance companies appear to be charging every young driver a premium that reflects that they all will make a claim, not 13% of them as stated in the release quoted. So I fail to see how the spreading risk around is working, it still appears to be maximum profit the market will stand, and lots of smoke and mirrors to justify it.

prosaver

mandi wrote: »

I don't think this is the case.

I have 21 years accident free, drive a small engined car, and my latest renewal quote has gone up by £70.00 . I have searched through all the insurers & can only find it £10,00 cheaper .

churchill is one off the cheapest...oooh yes:rotfl:

Percy1983

Mikey72 just hit the nail on the head, this is the problem, ALL young drivers are treated like they WILL claim.

Maybe there should be refunds system in place, as in all new drivers may pay alot but after the year if they have been proven to be a safe driver then they get X% back.

As people in the 'I'am ok thanks' brigade say 'why should I subsidise young dangerous drivers?', but the question is 'Why should young sensible/safe drivers subsidise young dangerous drivers?'.

blueghost

what annoys me is all the expenses these companies waste on jollys for staff and brokers, I have a friend who works in the insurance area and the amount of free meals/trips/drinks he gets offered by these insurance companies is unbelievable. It makes me sick to think my insurance is paying for all that.

dunstonh

I have a friend who works in the insurance area and the amount of free meals/trips/drinks he gets offered by these insurance companies is unbelievable.

I would agree with you if you were talking up to the mid 90s. However, nowadays they are skinflints.

It makes me sick to think my insurance is paying for all that.

Do you feel that way about insurance, do you feel the same about every other retail profession that does the same. Indeed, most areas have similar things.

Arg

raskazz wrote: »

So can you confirm a viable alternative?

I don't need to in order to point out a problem.

raskazz wrote: »

As you are no doubt aware, there are many factors which influence a private car premium:

Age
Gender
Area
Licence type/time held
Socio-economic group
Marital status
Occupation
Vehicle make/model/age/value/length owned
Vehicle modifications
Vehicle security
Annual mileage
Overnight parking
Use
Drivers
NCD
Claims history
Conviction history (motoring and non-motoring)

Where's the ethnicity catagory?