Do you think car insurance is expensive for young people?

UKParliament

MPs want to hear your views on a petition calling for a cap on insurance for 18-25 year olds to inform a committee evidence session. The petition reads:

“Put a max of £1200 on car insurance for 18-25 year olds

Insurance companies are making it harder and harder for people aged 18-25 years of age to start driving. I myself am looking at a £2500 insurance for my first year driving which is completely unaffordable as I am earning minimum wage £5.30 per hour and am also having to pay bill for my property.”

In particular, the Petitions and Transport Committees want to hear your views on:

• Do you think that car insurance is expensive for young people? If so, why and do you think those reasons are fair?
• How are young people affected by the cost of car insurance? Does this vary across the UK?
• What do you know about what the car insurance industry is doing to reduce the cost of car insurance for young people? Do you think it’s working?

An evidence session took place on Tuesday 28 February at 2.20pm, where your comments were used to inform questions asked by MPs to the following organisations:

• Elizabeth Box, Head of Research, RAC Foundation
• Nigel Dotchin, Chairman, Wheels 2 Work Association
• Crispin Moger, Chief Executive Officer, Marmalade
• Graeme Trudgill, Executive Director, British Insurance Brokers’ Association
• James Dalton, Director of General Insurance Policies, Association of British Insurers
• Simon Warsop, Global Chief Underwriting Officer (Personal Lines), Aviva

Watch the evidence session on Parliament TV.

Following the evidence session, MPs will debate the cost of car insurance for young people, in Westminster Hall.

Watch the debate from 4.30pm on Monday 20 March 2017.

Mobeer

1) Car insurance is particularly expensive for young people. It is also expensive for everyone else, just not quite so extreme. Car drivers are forced to buy insurance in a market where multiple suppliers seem to move their prices upwards in coordination.

2) Young people I know are law abiding and hence choose not to own a car, even those who hold licences. None drives without insurance.

3) Car insurance for all drivers, but especially the young, seems to be steadily rising over the long term. There is no reason for insurance companies not to coordinate such increases.

[Deleted User]

Insurance is a huge scam. You may go on compare sites and get quotes from 100s of suppliers but ultimately the insurance industry is run by just a few big insurance companies. No wonder whenever you have a claim involving another party it always goes 50/50. Because it's just the insurance companies claiming against themselves.

Seeing as having motor insurance is compulsory, the Government should run a third-party only insurance service at cost price.

dannyrst

No, don't cap insurance for younger drivers, because the price for the rest of us will go up to cover the losses.

PasturesNew

Yes it's expensive; cars and the cost of fixing other people's cars you might hit has gone up.

One solution is to select 3-4 cheap, small engined cars, say 500cc, and cap that for younger drivers, without mods. Then have those models heavily promoted so it becomes their "expectation" to drive a 500cc car to build up 1-2 years of no claims bonus ... rather than them thinking "Great, I'll get that souped up turbo like my mate"

forgotmyname

More important things than capping car insurance for young people surely?

My little one is in that category and we managed to get her insurance under £1000 with a 10 month bonus accelerator policy.

The quoted statement how do i afford a £2500 insurance bill when earning £5.30 and paying bills for their property, they priortise things the same as everyone else.
Plenty of people i know cannot afford to run cars. Not because they dont earn enough, but because they have a bigger priority. Maybe they want to buy a house and put every penny away for that, or maybe they have a house and want to be mortgage free early in life?

I have a long list of things i want, but if i bought everything then i wouldnt be able to eat for 20 years. And thats just small items it doesnt include a palace in london etc.

Maybe their insurance is expensive for a reason? My nephew passed his test about 2 years ago. 1st car lasted less than 2 weeks before it ended up on its roof. 2nd car he crashed into the back of someone about a week of buying it.
3rd car he took a corner too fast and pushed both front wheels backwards, that was within 4 days...

He bought a motorbike. Again it lasted less than a week, a car pulled across him.

Add to that 3 points for speeding.

I wonder why its expensive?

But if you cap insurance for young drivers will that also taper down to lower premiums for safe drivers? My insurance started dropping and now increasing again. Why am i paying £400 with a clean record for over 20 years?

Maybe its the choice of car and my postcode? But i chose the car and where to live.

Nasqueron

Car insurance sure but make sure pass plus or similar is a mandatory follow on from the driving test. Add regulations for new drivers like in Australia where new drivers have a P plate for 2 years:

Zero alcohol tolerance
Cannot use a mobile AT ALL
P plates mandatory
Mandatory speed limit regardless of whether the actual limit is higher - say 50mph until a year of driving experience with no points received
Mandatory limit on engine size for their own car (excludes people insured on a parent's car) until say 25
Maximum of one passenger under 21 11pm-5am (or even no driving at all in that time without a permit related to a job)

phoenix_w

I like PasturesNew's idea. Encouraging young drivers to drive something meagre/frugal and forcing them to drive courteously & keep their wits about them can't be a bad idea. My driving instructor always bleated that everyone should be forced to ride for a few months on a moped to increase their awareness of what's going on around them...

Modern cars with small engines have (comparatively) lots of horses compared to 10+ years ago. We seem to have a generation of drivers that always use their right foot to get out of a situation rather than engage brain. Thankfully safety equipment is much better as well!!

Car_54

Mobeer wrote: »

3) Car insurance for all drivers, but especially the young, seems to be steadily rising over the long term. There is no reason for insurance companies not to coordinate such increases.

Everything is rising long-term. Car insurance actually fell consistently between 2011 and 2014

What's stopping them co-ordinating is the Competition Act, which carries multi-million fines and possibly jail for directors. Ask BA (fined £121M) JJB Sports, Manchester United, etc. who were all caught price-fixing.

Car_54

Deleted_User wrote: »

Seeing as having motor insurance is compulsory, the Government should run a third-party only insurance service at cost price.

The government in New South Wales used to do exactly that. When it was "privatised" prices fell.

As have prices in most of the privatised industries in the UK. Governments aren't very good at running businesses.

Billy_Bullocks

Deleted_User wrote: »

Insurance is a huge scam. You may go on compare sites and get quotes from 100s of suppliers but ultimately the insurance industry is run by just a few big insurance companies. No wonder whenever you have a claim involving another party it always goes 50/50. Because it's just the insurance companies claiming against themselves.

Seeing as having motor insurance is compulsory, the Government should run a third-party only insurance service at cost price.

Always? I don't think it does.