for example

So, fair enough, for various reasons young drivers (esp. males) are more likely to cause or be involved in a motoring accident.

However wouldn’t it be fairer to set their insurance premiums at a lower level UNTIL they invoke a claim?

I understand that insurance is based on perceived risk, but wouldn’t it be fairer to give safe drivers a chance to prove they’re a much lower risk rather than just tarring them all with the same brush & assuming they’re going to go around crashing into everything all of the time.

I expect that’s far too simplistic a theory, but penalising people for something they may not do is weird.

I don’t wake up each morning and immediately punish my son just in case he might be naughty during the day…

“The company said the figure was a mistake and should not have appeared.”

However wouldn’t it be fairer to set their insurance premiums at a lower level UNTIL they invoke a claim?

No, especially not if the claim involved the death of my daughter in a car with her **** over confident punto driving boyfriend.

“The average [price] was probably about £12,000, £13,000 and the cheapest was £5,700. And I got £33,000 from AA,”

I got my first car and think 3rd party was £500 for the year and that about 8 years ago. It is pretty ridiculous what they have to pay now

It doesn’t exactly encourage young drivers to be law abiding does it. The cost doesn’t excuse not being insured but it will contribute to the number of uninsured drivers and they ironically are an even higher risk group.

I feel bad for kids just passing their tests these days. It was bad when I did 12 years ago but now it is beyond ridiculous.
Named driver on Mum and Dad’s policy seems to be the only real solution for them.

17 year old male inexperienced driver in a hot hatch in a dodgy area? Yeah, of course it’s going to be high!

Jake, from Eccles, was hoping to use his car to travel to Pendleton College, where he is studying IT, and his part-time job in a warehouse.

It’s 2 miles from Eccles to that college ffs!

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Pendleton+College,+Salford,+United+Kingdom&daddr=Eccles,+Manchester,+Greater+Manchester+M30,+UK&hl=en&geocode=FZhEMAMd29Lc_ykFB3uHTa57SDHyYmqOtf1sJQ%3BFcEXMAMdkTTc_ynRB8lDKal7SDFDMytO7vKMpw&mra=ls&sll=53.483457,-2.345839&sspn=0.05659,0.154324&g=Eccles,+manchester,+england&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14

No, especially not if the claim involved the death of my daughter in a car with her **** over confident punto driving boyfriend.

Perhaps you should tell your daughter, rather than us, that you’d rather she didn’t get a lift with her boyfriend.

Then you can tell us all how it went…

I notice the article doesn’t divulge any information on the car other than the model. I’ll put money on it not being the three-cylinder 1.0L model. “I bought a boy racer car and no-one will insure me.” QQ moar.

It’s 2 miles from Eccles to that college ffs!

I see what you’re getting at. A significant discount for limited mileage is in order?

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A great argument! Yes it’s all about relative risk.
We all know smoking increases the risk of critical illnesses, but why penalise the smoker before they get ill. Why not charge them the same rate for life insurance as non smokers until they actually get ill ?

PS – the OP’s comment around especially males is indeed correct, however an EU ruling has declared this as discriminatory. So unfortunately this is likely to cause an increase in recently qualified females premiums. It will however mean the end of Sheila’s Wheels annoying TV ad…..every cloud and all that.

It doesn’t exactly encourage young drivers to be law abiding does it

Totally agree. Who would be an 18-year old today with impossible insurance costs, five-figure uni fees, high unemployment… The insurance rates are unfair and counter-productive and I can see how they lead to more uninsured drivers on the road which benefits nobody.
The system in Australia seems much better: basic third-party insurance is included in the car registration (which is affordable). This means that generally young drivers are more law abiding – unregistered cars are easy to spot and confiscated. And you can drive a V8 rather than a clapped out Corsa.

“I was amazed because I was expecting to pay £3,000, £4,000, but not that high”.

He was prepared to pay more than the cost of his Corsa for 12 mths insurance.

Bonkers.

Yes, I think 17 year olds driving around in V8’s is a magnificient idea. 😉

It’s 2 miles from Eccles to that college ffs!

Perhaps car insurance is masquerading as some kind of lazy bugger tax.

corroded – Member
The system in Australia seems much better: basic third-party insurance is included in the car registration (which is affordable). This means that generally young drivers are more law abiding – unregistered cars are easy to spot and confiscated. And you can drive a V8 rather than a clapped out Corsa.

This is like the idea of including third party insurance in with fuel costs – but why should everybody else subsidise young drivers high risk?

I’m not surprised its so high. Have you ever been to Pendleton? Take a good look at the picture below and ask yourself; would i leave my car parked there all day, every day?

I used to live there, for my sins, and spent the evenings watching the local scrotes being chased by the police round the race circuit that was Salford Precinct. They’d nick just about anyt vehicle, race them round there for the evening, then torch them. I imagine not much has changed

I got my first car and think 3rd party was £500 for the year and that about 8 years ago. It is pretty ridiculous what they have to pay now

Insurance for my first car was £1200 that was 21 years ago, most young drivers pay that now. I think it’s fair.

No details of the car as mentioned and what a daft way to propose. Yeah pay is £300 not £1500 we trust your a good driver.

Incidentally,

Maybe I’m old fashioned but, whenever I’ve bought a vehicle (car or bike) I’ve rung around for insurance quotes before buying it so that I can avoid exactly this situation. I thought everyone did that but clearly not.

“Sorry son, we can’t insure you. No, nothing to do with your age, it’s because you’re a halfwit. It’s for your own good, it can be hard to clean saliva from the window.”

Insurance for my first car was £1200 that was 21 years ago

TPF&T insurance for my first car – a normally aspirated, 13 year old 1.1L Fiesta – at around the same time was about £400 iirc. Probably more than the car was worth.

If you’re 17 and you’ve got three grand to spend on a car, I’d suggest that the “high price of insurance” problem has a readily apparent solution for those of us with an IQ higher than a bunch of grapes. Plenty of disposable motors to be had for a tenth of that figure and you’ll be less heartbroken when you (inevitably) stuff it. Hell, push the boat out, you can get something really nice for a grand (I got a mint Scorpio for that a few years ago) and still have two grand left for insurance.

I passed my test 13 years ago, and my insurance premium at that time was £514.65 TPFT, I remember thinking that was expensive for my £1500, 954cc Citroen AX. Three years ago my brother bought his first car, a 1.25 ford fiesta for the princely sum of £250, his insurance was c£1700! I remember him telling me that one of his friends had a 1.2 Corsa and was paying in the region of £3k to insure that, which is just insane IMO.

TPF&T insurance for my first car – a normally aspirated, 13 year old 1.1L Fiesta – at around the same time was about £400 iirc. Probably more than the car was worth.

950cc Fiesta here but I live in the North East home of the joyrider frenzy, ram raiding and high amount of stolen cars at the time. Anyone with a NE postcode paid crazy amounts, even though I was 18 miles from the toubled area and they stole Sierra Cosworths not Fiestas.

Seems like a lot, but look, FREE breakdown cover included AND 90 days European cover – bargaintastic, like a singlespeed on ebay

I am 31 years old. Only passed my last year. Fiesta 1.4 ’03 Zetec is £630 fully comp with UK/EU Breakdown, legal cover etc.

I thought that was expensive, until I realised actually in the current market it is quite reasonable….all things considered.

Perhaps you should tell your daughter, rather than us, that you’d rather she didn’t get a lift with her boyfriend.

Then you can tell us all how it went…

It went fine actually – she knows he’s an overconfident shit driver

I thought that was expensive, until I realised actually in the current market it is quite reasonable….all things considered.

Age is key here. When I started driving at 18, fully comp insurance was easily three times TPF&T cover and would’ve been well into four figures for my first car.

Fast forward fifteen years or so, and I could insure a 500cc motorbike (after just passing my bike test) for about £100.

Until the leading cause of death in young women ceases to be their boyfriends cars, I suggest we stick to the current system and let the good young drivers earn their no claims to bring the cost down.

I spent too long reading police and medical reports and looking at photos of scars and injuries, usually after an accident caused by some young bloke who’d tried to insure his XR3i in his mothers name to avoid the premium

Maybe harsher penalties, a probationary year or a power or speed restriction like on motorbikes might help. Or the abolition of the whole ambulance chasing industry that racks up claims and values.

swadey – ex motor injury claims handler

a probationary year or a power or speed restriction like on motorbikes

A thirty grand premium is pretty restrictive (-: But yes, I’d agree with that.

For me, the only way of getting behind a wheel at 18 was specifically getting a crap car with a tiny engine. I can only assume that the only teens in performance cars are either loaded, come from a loaded family, or are driving illegally.

If you’d asked me at the time, I could probably have told you the insurance group of pretty much any car on the road, or have had a pretty good guess.

Here’s an idea, how about young drivers just don’t get a car until they can afford to tax, insure and run it?! When I learnt to drive (lessons were a compulsory birthday present!) it was years after I passed my test before I could run my own vehicle.

Then when I had owned it for a couple of years, managed to move out of my parents place I had to sell it because I couldn’t afford to run it. I don’t recall thinking to myself, “oh insurance is far too high, maybe I just won’t bother forking out for it” this excuse that it encourages illegal behaviour seems a bit ridiculous to me. But then I’ve always viewed driving and owning a car as a privilege, not a right.

It’s the governments fault. Well, europe I expect.

When I were a lad you bought a motorbike. The halfwits were removed from the population without taking anyone with them (or making a claim). The survivors were safe and insurance for cars was cheap.

Now bike licences are so hard to get (you actually have to do a test, not just slap L-plates onto your 250) the younguns get cars and kill other people.

Vote UKIP. Or something.

The system in Australia seems much better: basic third-party insurance is included in the car registration (which is affordable).

Hmmm…it depends on where you go.

In South Australia, for instance, CTP (compulsory third party) is a flat fee attached to registration and for cars it’s about $550. http://www.mac.sa.gov.au/xstd_files/2010-11%20Premium%20Schedule.pdf

In New South Wales, on the other hand, CTP is a separate policy that must be bought before a car can be registered. A person of the same age as the kid in the BBC story living in a comparably rough place would have to pay…about $550 a year.

But NB two things:

– the NSW premium does take into account age and driving record of the owner/driver, the SA scheme does not. This means that lots of people pay less than the amount the kid would pay in NSW, but in SA everyone gets stuck paying the same, and it’s a high rate. This suggests that SA has a poorly-managed scheme or a lot of crashes on the roads – possibly both.

– both the NSW and SA schemes only cover personal injury to third parties. It doesn’t cover property damage. So if a driver with the legal minimum insurance smacks into another car and it’s their fault, the driver still has to search around and find the money to fix the car (which is easily a few grand these days).

I looked at this news story and thought ‘I don’t care’.

The reason? It helps the yoof confront and understand that car use is expensive.

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My 17yr old lad had to have a tracker fitted to his Clio with his insurance,means he can’t use it between 11pm & 7am(well he can but it costs £43 for every hour).Had other quotes from £3,200 – £5,500,with the tracker it came down to £1,450 & that included having it fitted as well…..Still not cheap but a hell of a lot cheaper than anything else out there..

We had a very minor bump in the car. Hands up, our fault. No sooner had I registered it when I got a text through. “We believe that you have been in an accident. You could get upto £3500!!! Test back “claim” to proceed or “stop” to go no further.”

That’s what is pushing insurance up. Spurious claims for non-existant injuries.

insurance is getting stupid my little Suzuki swift cost me 400 to insure last year got up to the magic 4 years NCB this year so thought woohoo even cheaper insurance only to find it had gone up by 250 quid. how can they justify that price rise I don’t know.

the thing with a young [predominantely male] driver is they are shockingly bad drivers. More accidents, more high speed loss of control type accidents [ ie not really an accident but poor driving]and more fatalities and mre fatalities oer accident etc.
The reason the premiums are high is because they earn them by poor driving.
When an industry is based on risk it seeems reasonable to base your costs on that risk. high premiums are basically insurance companies not wanting your custom.

One thing that was under discussion was a no-claims refund, basically converting part of the insurance cost into a no-claim bond for higher risk drivers. I don’t know if it ever made it out into the market though- there were all sorts of complicated concerns, a lot of analysts reckoned it’d increase costs and there was a fear it’d increase hit-and-runs. But it seemed a not bad idea in principle.

Does seem to me there’s better ways to handle it than pricing them off the road though. Better driver training, better driver probation maybe- at the moment you have to do a retest if you get 6 points within a set timescale IIRC, that could be expanded. But that’d need a lot of policing.

It’s true a lot of my son’s mates have had bumps or been caught speeding,& that includes the girls,but not all of them.I think if they can go the first year without any claims or driving convictions then it should drop by 50% at least.If they can prove themselves to be a decent driver then they should be awarded accordingly imo..

However wouldn’t it be fairer to set their insurance premiums at a lower level UNTIL they invoke a claim?

It might be fairer, but as insurance company you’d go bust.
Joe Blogs is 17 and can’t afford the existing insurance of say 5K.
Let’s say insurance companies give all kids the benefit of the doubt and set the insurance at £500.
Now Joe and all his mates can afford this rate, so they buy cars, get insurance, and 60% of them crash in the first year. These 60% then have their insurance put up to 5K. Of course they can’t afford 5K, so give up driving.
Meanwhile the insurance company has to recoup it’s money back from the other drivers, so it has the choice of spreading the pain evenly amongst everyone, or targetting the group causing the problem. If they choose the former, then people older than 17 will simply move to an insurance company that doesn’t do this.

I think if they can go the first year without any claims or driving convictions then it should drop by 50% at least.If they can prove themselves to be a decent driver then they should be awarded accordingly imo.

Do you think a 18 year old with one year’s experience is only 50% as likely to have an accident as a 17 year old with no experience?

According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), 12% of drivers are aged 17 to 24 – but they are responsible for almost 30% of accidents.

(from the OP’s article)

My brother’s been driving for some 10 years, he has 10 years NCB too. When he had a Skoda Felicia the fully comp was 300 Euro, when he bought a Punto – 600 Euro. The broker said Punto/Corsa/Polo/Fiesta etx are generally bought by inexperienced drivers who soup them up and crash expensively a lot. He bought a 1.8l Primera – 670 Euro FC.