Pass Plus or not!

Rhi80

Hi all,
I have just gained my drivers licence and am deciding if I should now do Pass Plus at a cost of £175. Lessons and two attempts at test have dipped heavily in to my savings already and now wondering if I can even afford the driving costs!!
I think I am mostly hoping for a reduction in car insurance but also know I should be factoring in the safety side aswell.
Can you let me know if you have completed pass plus and how much discount you received, if any.
I am female and 32 yrs old! and what I have read up on pas plus it seems aimed at younger drivers.
Any advice much appreciated.
Thanks

PollyOnAMission

I can't offer any direct advice regarding Pass Plus, but you may want to look into this as an option too:

http://www.iam.org.uk/motorist/the-advanced-programme80

It costs less than Pass Plus, can be taken over as many "lessons" as you need with no extra cost, is not so much aimed at younger drivers and is considered by quite a few insurance companies.

skivenov

Just providing a link to RoSPA advanced driver training for balance. http://www.roadar.org/drivers/index.htm

I personally qualified with RoSPA. The standard you are trained to is the same. I'm not up to date on pricing for either. The main difference is if you do your advanced with IAM, you have the bit of paper for life, whereas with RoSPA you have the option to re-sit every three years if you want to keep your qualification current. Bearing in mind that none of us are perfect, we all forget stuff and develop bad habits, I thought the second option made more sense.

The only other difference is the IAM test is Pass/Fail. The Pass standard for RoSPA is broadly the same and called a Bronze Pass. Higher standards are rewarded with a Silver or Gold Pass.

RoxRoxBling

I would say it is mainly for young drivers, however, as you're still in the first year of passing it may help you.
If you want to boost your confidence in driving then take pass plus.

Here's my experience:
Shorly after I passed I took a pass plus course.
Aged 19, 1.2l Corsa - Cost me £830/annaul to insure.
Now I don't know how much of a discount pass plus actually gave me. But I think what I paid for insurance in my first year was a fair deal.

rxbren

your better off to ring for an insurance quote and speak to them to see how much you would save if you did the pass plus
if the saving is less than the outlay its a waste

Tobster86

Use a comparison site, comparing quote prices with & without.
I'd advise that the difference it makes may also vary by vehicle type, so factor that into the equation if you don't have one yet.

I'd say at 32 it's unlikely to be worth it as you're over the 25-year 'rape them for every penny' threshold. Age is more relevant to insurance companies than experience.
Also, since you're over 25, you don't necessarily have to worry about getting something small, cheap & awful.

Mojisola

If you don't want to do an official course, you can ask for a couple more sessions and work on specific areas such as motorway driving or night-time driving or whatever you feel you need.

OH and I are at the other end of our driving careers and are going to have informal assessments every few years to make sure we stay safe drivers and don't leave our relatives with the rotten job of trying to tell us that we are no longer safe on the road!

lostinrates

rxbren wrote: »

your better off to ring for an insurance quote and speak to them to see how much you would save if you did the pass plus
if the saving is less than the outlay its a waste

Sort of. It's better to be as safely confident a driver as possible, if that's aided by any course then it's good and potentially 'worth it'

In our experience however, my dh also took his test as 'an adult' and over twenty five, and financially saw no benefit, nor practically as all but motorway driving he encountered during the initial stages of learning.

If we were to choose again he said he felt skid training would be useful, (rural area) and an advanced course, but more advanced than pass plus and a driving through London course! He is a sedate driver though, so others might feel differently.

newfoundglory

I would say you are very unlikely to benefit from pass plus. But you should check to make sure.

I'm a guy, and when I passed 3 years ago, aged 25 - i looked into pass plus.

Not all insurers offered a discount for it; the discount was less than course cost for the cheapest quotes, and in my case the cheapest quote at the time (Admiral) was less than all the others - and Admiral didn't even offer pass plus!

I had insurance quotes ranging from £700 to almost £3500, and 10% off a quote for £3,500 is not less than £700 !! :rotfl:

Just shop around for the cheapest quotes....

Hughjass

I read on MSE some time ago that some local authorities pay half the cost towards a pass plus course, may be worth a search.

Lum

When I looked into this, which was admittedly a long time ago, the only insurers that gave a discount for pass plus were the ones that were particularly expensive to start with, it brought them down to only a little bit more than the insurers that didn't care about pass plus.

So from a purely financial perspective, it was worthless.

These days it's a lot easier to determine if this is still the case. Get online quotes with and without pass plus and see if it pays off.

If it doesn't. Go down the IAM/RoSPA route instead.