insurance after accident

savvygirl1986

Hello
Hoping someone can help me/offer some advise. In March another car hit mine while i had right of way on a round about. The other driver admitted fault the police and both insurance companies both agreed and my no claims have not been affected the car is repaired and the claim now closed.

I did a search for car insurance and mine is due for renewal in March. I wanted to check that i wasnt being penalised for having an accident so on Swift ran a quote both with and without the accident. The difference was £22.00. Of course i will still need to declare the accident but is it right that my insurance is more even though the accident wasnt my fault? Does anyone know of any insurers who dont do this or is it the same across the board?

Thank you

vaio

so do, some don't

just look at the bottom line

InsideInsurance

Rating engines are getting increasingly complex as computers become better at running vast quantities of data and so its not as simple as being able to name individual insurers as one may not do any loadings for over 30 with a single non-fault claim but load give large loadings to under 20 with non-fault claim.

Just do the normal shopping around, checking comparison sites etc

Bantex_2

Even having a no fault accident makes you a statistically higher risk. Premiums are likely to reflect this.

SuperHan

Bantex wrote: »

Even having a no fault accident makes you a statistically higher risk. Premiums are likely to reflect this.

It's strange you say that... After my no fault accident, I was on the phone to my insurer (Admiral), and I was clearly upset and shaken up. He said to me, statistically, you were going to get in to one accident in your life be glad that it's now while you're young (I was 22) and not when your 60-70 when it might scare you enough to stop you driving ever again.

So you'd think statistically, (I don't know the actual number, but for arguments sake) a person will have an average of 2 car accidents in their lifetime, by virtue of me already having 1, I'm less statistically likely to have a crash in the next 12 months as I have say 50 years to have my statistical 1 further accident, whereas the next person may have 50 years to have 2 accidents, so increase their statistical chance of crashing in the next 12 months.


Although, in practice, you are entirely right, and I pay around £30 more a year if I declare my non fault accident (which of course I do).

Aretnap

Gambler's fallacy. The bloke who answers the phone for Admiral presumably isn't an actuary. If he was, instead of giving you a no claims discount they'd give you a discount for having lots of acidents, and people who've had ten accidents in the last two years would be an insurer's idea of the perfect customer. :eek:

InsideInsurance

SuperHan wrote: »

It's strange you say that... After my no fault accident, I was on the phone to my insurer (Admiral), and I was clearly upset and shaken up. He said to me, statistically, you were going to get in to one accident in your life be glad that it's now while you're young (I was 22) and not when your 60-70 when it might scare you enough to stop you driving ever again.

So you'd think statistically, (I don't know the actual number, but for arguments sake) a person will have an average of 2 car accidents in their lifetime, by virtue of me already having 1, I'm less statistically likely to have a crash in the next 12 months as I have say 50 years to have my statistical 1 further accident, whereas the next person may have 50 years to have 2 accidents, so increase their statistical chance of crashing in the next 12 months.

Unfortunately the person on the phone is just a call centre agent with a couple of weeks training on how to use the system and the basics of selling.

Your logic on statistics doesnt work, if for example you are a hard accelerate/ late braker kind of person. You brake hard one day and someone goes into the back of you. Non-fault accident TP should have left sufficient braking distance. You dont change your behaviour, after all it wasnt your fault, and so the only way your chances of having another accident were to go down is if somehow every other driver in the world somehow knew you were a later braker, which obviously they dont.

Life isnt "fair" in that we all get the same number of crashes in life. I remember one policyholder who had 3 crashes in 2 months. Even my own vehicle was broken into 4 times in as many weeks. The former was an old boy who kept mistaking brake and gas whilst parking. Mine was living in a dodgy area with on street parking and a decent stereo. Again, my probability of another incident wasnt going to change unless I moved address or changed my car or such

In reality, a non-fault claim means you are more likely to have more because there is a chance it has come about because you park in a dodgy place or are a bad driver etc

savvygirl1986

Is it not a bit of a generic statement to say that if you have a non fault accident you wont change your behaviour if you are a late braker etc? I was on a round about with right of way and got smacked by a driver coming onto it i was already on my way exiting when he hit me. If you can tell me what i could do to prevent that happening again please do! And i was far more cautious on round abouts after this. Whay if you were sat at a set of traffic lights and the driver behind hit you because he didnt pay attention? Its only £20 quid but it is the principal really. Thank you for everyones comments i shop around anyway was just curious :-)

TrickyDicky101

savvygirl1986 wrote: »

Is it not a bit of a generic statement to say that...

Yep, you've pretty much summed up statistical concepts used in insurance premium determination!

You are statistically a higher risk now so I'm afraid you're going to suffer these higher premiums for a while.

Aretnap

A number of years ago approaching a junction I couldn't be bothered waiting in the left hand lane with everyone else to turn left, so I overtook the queue in the empty right hand lane, pulled into a gap in the queue at speed, slammed by brakes on... and the guy behind didn't brake as fast as me. He admitted liability, and I was hardly going to argue with that, but really could I complain about the fact that my knobbish driving put my premium up a bit the next year?

Maybe some types of accident do mark you out as a higher risk than others, but the computer system doesn't distinguish between them - you tick the box which says no fault accident and it doesn't know whether you were innocently hit at traffic lights, or whether you were driving like a tool ands lay escaped getting the blame yourself by pure luck. So it just looks at whether drivers with non fault claims on average have more accidents than those without.

If you'd like a more bespoke approach you could go to Lloyds of London, sit down with your underwriter over a cup of tea, discuss the circumstances of your accident with him in detail and see if he thinks it marks you out as a higher risk... but for that level of personalised service you would inevitably have to pay a lot more than then extra £20 the computer wants to charge you.

marlot

SuperHan wrote: »

He said to me, statistically, you were going to get in to one accident in your life be glad that it's now while you're young...

Reminds me of Baldrick carving his name into a bullet. "people say there's a bullet out there with your name on it, so I thought I'd keep mine in my pocket"

One of the big things I learned on my advanced motorbike course was placing myself so I was much less likely to be hit. I use some of the same techniques with the car. Now up to a million miles since my last at fault claim, and 300,000 from my last not-at-fault.