Living in Thailand, We pay around £350 pa insurance for a £8k 4X4 pick up, fully comp. That £350 insures the vehicle. Anyone who can legally drive (full licence and sober) can drive it and be fully insured. We have zero excess, both for our vehicle and any 3rd party issue.

My wife drove over a lose paving slab and the trailing edge popped up, breaking the running board and denting the bottom of the door sill. The insurance man drove to our house 3 hours after my initial phone call. He took photos of the damage and wrote a ‘ticket’ to take to an approved garage for repair. We take a copy of the log book (it’s proof of ownership and has the equivalent of a tax disc in it), insurance policy and form from the insurance man. The garage repair the car and tell us when to pick it up. At no stage are we out of pocket.

Our premium next year will be identical, assuming we keep the value of the truck at £8k.

Why is the UK such an expensive place to insure a car? Why in a similar situation would it be weeks or months of emails, forms and calls to get any form of outcome? Why would premiums then sky-rocket?

Thailand isn’t a 3rd world country and, you can be sure as hell, the insurance company is well unwritten and making a healthy profit every year.

Is the DM correct and British drivers are shafted at every opportunity?

and, do we go for

a)

or

b)

It’s the idiots that want their whole car resprayed because it got a tiny scratch. And they want a hire car too. I blame the car makers, too, for making bumpers and lights fragile and expensive.

Is insurance mandatory in Thailand?

£350 sounds steep – what would it cost you to be insured on that car in the UK?

Bumpers are named wrong.

Black abs bumpers are bumpers….

Coloured bumpers made of egg shells found on most cars that crack when you look at them are the reason insuance costs an arm and a leg.

Cant wait to get my steel girder bumpers back. That will make folks think twice about using me for a bump stop.

You make a good point john doh. I can insure one of em fast imprezzas for that money last i checked.

Yep – I pay £280 on a £45k 3 litre 240bhp estate and that’s with one ‘at fault’ claim on my record and a speeding conviction (and it also covers my wife and business use).

Try getting any driver cover here for £350 though and you’ve got no chance.

Thats cause its a stupid idea….

Insure the person not the car. The person causes the accident not the car 😉

Fair point @wanman, but is it necessary for the majority of people? I would rather pay less and have named driver cover as there is no-one else I would even want driving my car.

3rd party is mandatory. It comes with the ‘tax’. It costs about £5 for a motorbike and £60 for a car / truck.

That £350 is any driver and, I guess, the equiv. of protected no claims. You don’t get the opportunity to build up no claims so there is some form of swings and roundabouts at play. I’d be a 30 year old with no no claims looking to insure a vehicle that can plough through a lot of expensive people or other cars. 3.0L (modified) turbo with poor handling. Big wheels. 420’/lb torque, RWD (usually)… I’m no actuary but sounds like an expensive proposition to me!

I love the idea of insure the car not the driver. Although my boy’s only 3 next month, the notion of putting him in a safe car (not a tin-can-Micra car) where I’m balancing his safety against cost* when he’s old enough is great. On several occasions, amongst friends, the designated driver has been bartered for / against / re-negotiated. I’ve lost sometimes as in been on coke all night and driven a friends car home. I’ve been in a similar position back in the UK where I was sober but still unable to legally drive friends home. Frustrating.

What do you have Johndoh? BMW 530? Try insuring your 30 year old friend with no no claims. Bet the premium would increase a little. How about an 18 year old who passed his test yesterday? I wouldn’t want someone driving my net salary around either!

Ignoring the cost, has anyone had service comaparable to mine this morning? And it’s not a scratch in the bumper, it’s a f-off bing ding in the alu! 🙂

*and aren’t we all or 17 year olds would be driving around in V70’s

I suspect personal injury claims for seriously injured 3rd parties are way lower in Thailand than in the UK

You looked at the ncap of your big truck ? ISuzu isnt it… 1 star for an adult and 2 for a kid.

2010 micra got 4 stars for adult and kid……

Big isnt always safe , inertia has to go somewhere.

jota – probably.

trail_rat – I did. Extensively. 4 Star and I can’t afford anything better.

http://www.euroncap.com/results/isuzu/d_max/482.aspx

And, I’d assume, the roll cage has only improved it! But, I agree that tonnage ? safety.

Ah its a dmax not a rodeo fair enough . Still significant less safe for kids than the micra though.

And what makes you think a rollcage has improved its safety rating ? Ive seriously reconsidered adding a rollcage to my land rover having seen the outcome of a rolled minibus with a retrofitted cage firstly come apart on impact and secondly hinder the emergency services gaining access to the rear passengers in the vehicle.

Plus its increased the centre of gravity of an already tall top heavy vehicle.

But its big .

It’s been a while since I’ve been in that part of the world, but how what does £350 buy you in Thailand? I strongly suspect that the cost of living is very much lower and as a conseqence £350 is worth a lot more than that so comparing cost like that is likely to be disingenuous at best.

The roll cage was actually a cheaper(ish) option) when looking how to get 4 bikes in with no wheels removed.

I’d imagine the roll cage, whilst having no effect on inertia (really), has protected the rar of the cab from buckling – therefore, can only make it better.

I’m an English teacher not an engineer but my B-I-L (a fireman) agrees with me, in principle. “…jaws of life cut through roll cage like tissue paper”

Nope, not a Rodeo. Couldn’t lift the baby seat in through that.

edit: gonefishin – very true(although the cost of living isn’t as different as it used to be). It’s the level of service and the idea of insure the car not the driver and protected no claims that I don’t understand – Brtish drivers seem to get screwed!

Do you mean roll cage or roll bar ?

more like this

Although really, somewhere between the two. It goes over the back of the cab and down the pillars.

What do you have Johndoh? BMW 530?

Close – Audi A6 Avant 3.0tdi

Well as least its properly fitted so its going to do some good. And being a rear only it shouldnt impact the access for the emergency services .

Lot more cuts need to be made with jaws of life to get through a full rollcage increasing time to extraction. Complicated by the fact the bolt together interior cage was really badly fitted/and hidden by the body work + broke up on impact with the ground. Im warey of them now.

I insure three cars fully comp in the UK for a little over £350.

Insurance is simple, divide the overall cost of the risk insured amongst everyone as proportionate to the individual as you can.

That’s not to say there isn’t any inefficiencies, preffered repairers and referral fees etc. Theres some decent sharholder profits but I bet industry operating costs are as low as anywhere.

Driving cars around the UK causes a lot of damage to a lot of expensive stuff.

Is the DM correct and British drivers are shafted at every opportunity?

Unlikely as it the DM.

£8k

£45k

The value of the car hardly factors in the cost on insurance at all. Its the third party liability, the millions of pounds worth of damage and death that most of the premium is made up of (and the fragility and expense of other peoples bumpers and lights)

People (often younger drivers) often huff and puff about what it costs to insure when a car only costs ‘x’ but if you look at standard rates of compensation for disfigurement and permanent injury as well as for loss of income for the rest of someones life working life the figures quickly run into 100s of thousand of pounds, easily into £1m or more plus legal costs. An accident where both your car and the one you hit is fully occupied – verrry expensive. Even in the event of something minor – two front teeth out could easily cost more than the value of a nice car.

The value of the car hardly factors in the cost on insurance at all.

I know, I was just illustrating my view based on the same assumptions / details as the OP

We have a second car that costs £140 a year fully comp (again, me and my wife to drive but no business insurance on it) – its a 150bhp Mazda 3 Sport.

Yep – I pay £280 on a £45k 3 litre 240bhp estate and that’s with one ‘at fault’ claim on my record and a speeding conviction (and it also covers my wife and business use).

Who’s that with ? I just ran a check for Mrs Taxi on that car, she’s been driving for 20yrs no accidents or conviction, SDP, 12,000 miles only and I couldn’t get close to that !!

Who’s that with ?

The AA – £278.67

I am 47 though, so my age may figure a bit….

Average UK earnings – £26.5k

Average Thailand earnings – £13.5k

So the equivalent quote in the UK would be £700. Not quite so appealing?

I rode into the back of a (newish) mini. Completely my fault, hand up. Bastard headwind had me staring at the floor and I must have been daydreaming. Didn’t quite stop in time. Tiny mark in ‘bumper’ of mini.

All settled by British Cycling 3rd party insurance.

£4000

🙄

Did they claim whiplash? 😉

No idea, I kept out of it. I assume it was ‘lost earnings’ or some such bull crap.

TBH the only two times I’ve seen body coloured bumpers argue with anything serious first hand (cars, posts) they’ve been barely scuffed. The one on the front of a Celica (gen7) managed a rear-ending which did hefty damage to the car in front and popped back with nothing more than a damaged clip – not even a scratch. The same cars rear end got a post impact and has a slight kink mark.

OTOH my good old peugeot 205 bumpers splintered spectacularly in an impact.

On the third hand, our old classic rangey took a number of rear-endings over it’s life and never a mark was seen!

The bumpers on my 370 form a large part of the front of the vehicle, I’m a little terrified of the replacement cost if needed! I bought it as a CatD writeoff when it was valued at 18K. It has no structural damage, no dents to anything that hasn’t been replaced and the repairs are immaculate. The biggest cost in it are the pedestrian-helping bonnet-pop-up explosive devices that protect the head of the person being impacted. No-one ever replaces them as the explosives are £1K a piece, single use items and the sensors all get damaged in the impact – normal cost for replacement is ~3K parts alone for even a light impact, not even looking at body/paint repairs.

There are a few key issues at play here. 1) Repairers are happy, even overjoyed, at the prospect of an insurance job. They double or triple the costs. Ever walked into a body shop and asked for the cost of a repair? The first question they ask is “is it insurance?”. For giggles I’ve started off asking as if it was and had prices well over a grand for a bumper replace/respray. When I’ve said I might go elsewhere to save the person’s claim they’ve said “well if you want to do it out of insurance it’s ~350”.
Second, if insurance is compulsory it should be provided on a not-for-profit basis by the state. You want to pay more for fully comp – go for it, that’s your choice, but the 3rd party aspect should be profit-free. Thirdly, insurance companies are all too happy to go for high repair costs to get overall costs down – 50:50? Sure, it wasn’t your fault but it’ll get it over and done with for us.

Trailrat

You looked at the ncap of your big truck ? ISuzu isnt it… 1 star for an adult and 2 for a kid.

2010 micra got 4 stars for adult and kid……

Big isnt always safe , inertia has to go somewher

You do realise that you can’t compare between classes don’t you.

Euro NCAP’s frontal impact test simulates a car crashing into another of similar mass and structure. In real life, when two cars collide the vehicle with the higher mass has an advantage over the lighter one. Generally speaking, vehicles with higher structures tend to fare better in accidents than those with lower structures. Therefore, ratings are comparable only between cars of similar mass and with broadly similar structures. Euro NCAP groups cars into the following structural categories: passenger car, MPV, off-roader, roadster and pickup. Within each of those categories, cars which are within 150kg of one another are considered comparable.

State run insurance would be way more expensive.

State run insurance would be way more expensive.

Evidence from all the countries that do it says otherwise.

Why is the UK such an expensive place to insure a car?

Same reason everything else is expensive. Cost of living. Is the body shop guy in Thailand being paid the same amount as here? What fraction of mean annual income is £350?

£350 sounds steep – what would it cost you to be insured on that car in the UK?

Steep, you’ve obviously not got kids at driving age – >£2k for their premiums.

According to the internets mean Thai monthly income is £250 ish. The op would seem to be a premium customer…

£350 in thailand sounds expensive to me, you can but a house there for a few grand

Not sure on insurance premiums, but in the Netherlands you insure the car rather than the driver, so its obviously possible to do it in a developed European country with a high(er than here) quality of life.

makecoldplayhistory – Member

Why is the UK such an expensive place to insure a car? Why in a similar situation would it be weeks or months of emails, forms and calls to get any form of outcome? Why would premiums then sky-rocket?

Are you trying to dent the wallet of insurance bureaucrats? How dare you question their earnings? Do you know you owe them a living? Charging a sky rocket premium is a right for them and a privilege for you. 😈

Thailand isn’t a 3rd world country and, you can be sure as hell, the insurance company is well unwritten and making a healthy profit every year.

Is the DM correct and British drivers are shafted at every opportunity?

and, do we go for

Yeap, you are shafted by the anal retentive bureaucrats as they are tightening their grips on the population and think that it is their rights to do so. Earning a living is so hard they don’t give a toss …