I still can't get car insurance.

The insurance industry need straightening out here. Thay are cherry picking!

Premiums for young male drivers are way in excess of the risk they present. The business doesn't want your male drivers – period!

When I was 21, after 1 year of motoring in a 1300cc Fiat, I bought a Ford RS2000 2.0l Escort. I paid £2400 for the car and £278 for TPF&T. I had one minor accident in it when some burk suddenly u-turned from a parked position. He had been having a row with his girlfriend who was stood on her doorstep and a susbsequent court case ruled against him, even though he was 7 years my senior.

The scenes we see on TV of young hooligans tearing things up are not representative of most young drivers. Many of these people probably have no insurance because the premiums are way too high. I'm not condoning them whatsoever, but I can see how frustrating it must be for them.

I saw a TV clip the other day where some young lad had been quoted £4000 (lowest he could find) to insure a humble ageing supermini. The news article was highlighting parent's ignornce about the fraud they were committing by adding their offspring to their own inurance, then not actually using the insured car, but giving it to their son's/daughters.

Come on insurance industry, don't be such unreasonable greedy xxxxs! Stop giving these young uninsured drivers a motive and ripping off hard working young people (or their hard pressed parents)!

Car insurance industry is a joke, especially for younger drivers. The minority of fcukwits coupled with the greed culture seem to make for ridiculous premiums.

I agree with a couple of posters in that you should get your mum added as a second driver, or find a girl (with a clean record) and add her instead.

Spongebob – unfortunate fact is that young male drivers really are just that much of a risk. Insurers are trying to scrape a profit in an incredibly competitive market (thanks to compare the market etc, if you arent the cheapest then you wont sell any insuarnce). So they are making more of an effort to ensure they dont sell any policies for less than the average risk they pose.

And now claim farming injury lawyers find multi-thousand pound injury claims in what would 5 years ago have been a £100 accidental damage car park bump, so premiums cant rise quickly enough. Plus the crash for cash gimps who keep on having 10mph head-on crashes 3am in a quiet industrial estate between two cars both containing 5 people all of whom have whiplash and want a big pile of compensation. The industry as a whole has made massive losses over the last few years and are jacking up prices now to try to get things back together.

In my opinion the answer is to copy what someone told me they do in Australia – absolutely no payouts for whiplash. Sure, some geniune cases will go uncompensated, but everyone's insurance goes back to realistic levels and the scammers have to find a new way to diddle cash out of the general public.

For young drivers you should try old fashioned brokers as well, there are still some out there – they will be able to access the insurers that aren't on the price comparison sites etc

Other than moving house (don't insure it at an address you don't live at, this is also fraudulent and the insurers are getting very wise to this) there's not much you can do about a Manchester postcode, I have one too and it's a killer

as the other posters correctly said – put an older person on your policy (not fronting as ziggy is right about that), get the mileage as low as you can, get a low group car, sdp only (basically don't drive it to work)

the only other option is to wait until you are older, the premiums come down significantly and will probably outstrip the NCD saving generated

one other point (slightly off topic apols) but do you really think that an insurance company would leave their rates unchanged or reduce them ? especially in this financial climate given that inflation is higher than the govt lie about it's current rate, and given that in a recession the claim volumes increase…

The insurance industry need straightening out here. Thay are cherry picking!

It's a business, that's what businesses do unfortunately.

The scenes we see on TV of young hooligans tearing things up are not representative of most young drivers.

However I know most (ok a large number) of my male friends had written off at least 1 car, some 2 or 3 within their first 4 years driving, some to the tune of 15K. I'd say literally 50% of my friends wrote off their first car, fortunately into fields or walls though. That said, those sorts of impacts are low-ish cost as walls and own-vehicle don't cost much, its when you take out a family of 4 in a 50,000 quid car going the other way that it costs!

Hardly surprising they bump the premiums up. The only advice I can give is get on the bandwagon, get the right car not a small car (slow, hard to break into, non-boy-racerable cars are far cheaper than 1 litre corsas) and put someone with stacks of years insurance on your policy. 3 points at 21, and living in manchester is doing you no good at all. The price of insurance for me was literally doubled if I wanted to live in the outskirts of liverpool, rather than 10 miles further into the fields. All of a sudden, abou the age of 25, it becomes reasonable. And by the time you have multiple cars including vastly modified ones all covered with full NCB and no points they start to think you might have at least half-decent driving technique and responsibility, but until then you're a liability.

I still haven;t quite worked out why my van is so expensive to insure – 1.9tdi VW t5 2005 $380 fully comp, 1996 Porsche 993 targa – $209 fully comp 😯 Both have same xs and both insured for anyone over 25, but don't tell anyone that or they'll want to 'borrow' the 993 !

I paid 1600 quid to insure my Ren 5 GT Turbo back in the day and it was maybe worth 2500 at the time. That was after i flipped my 206 Mi16 into a field on black ice – and to be fair to myself I was well within speed limit and there was a police car behind me who followed me in !

Count yourselves lucky that you don't live in British Columbia. I used to pay about 250 quid for fully comp insurance in the UK (max NCD, Ford Mondeo, outskirts of Wigan) and have just renewed the insurance on my 2005 Nissan X-Trail in Vancouver for $1800 CDN – and that's with the maximum discount! Without the discount, that would be $2800 (or 1800 quid!)

The problem here is ZERO competition on prices because car insurance can ONLY be purchased through the state run organization (ICBC). Still at least you don't waste vast amounts of time ringing round for car insurance quotes….

£700 Third party in 1978. IIRC insurance cost more than the car back then?
£105 fully comp now.

PMSL at some of the comments on here

The insurance industry need straightening out here. Thay are cherry picking!

Premiums for young male drivers are way in excess of the risk they present. The business doesn't want your male drivers – period!

Have you never heard of competition? There isnt just one insurance company out there. There are plenty of them (Granted they usually work their way back to a select few underwriters in the end) and they are under no restrictions to not insure young male drivers. Its just a simple fact that YMD's are a high risk. I remember being one myself and i remember the risks i took. As always the world owes someone something and today its young male drivers deserve cheaper insurance. If the market could stand it dont you think someone would be selling it at that price.

classic car?

kit car?

ok, youir utterly f****** if you crash at anything over walking pace, somehow my parents walked out of a head on between their MGB and a transit, but they were lucky, my dad was griping the wheel so hard he folded it into a figure of 8 on impact and my mum ended up facing the wrong way with the suspension and front wheel where her legs used to be.

But
23, no NCD, no points, Reading (where road wars is filmed), £340 fully comp and the car is insured for considerably more than its cost (standard practice to avoid it being written off, you get the insurance co to value it properly at the start of the year and its invariably 25% more than you'd buy/sell for (worth arround my midgets worth £3700-£4000, insured for about £5500).

Bite the bullet and pay it. You'll never get onto the insurance ladder unless you do.

Wife pays £700 pa for a Hyundai 1.9, she has no points but has a stupid habit of finding trees & gateposts, and has had a couple of own fault claims in the past.

Avoid getting mummy & daddy to be the main drivers, as insurance companies are extremely wise to this, and they'll use any reason not to pay out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10241769.stm

Bite the bullet and pay it. You'll never get onto the insurance ladder unless you do.

Not true, premiums drop anyway as you get older, at at 19 sensible cars are £3000, 23 it's £800 to insure, at 25 it halves again to arround £400.

If it's worth it you'll just have to pay up, if not spend a year on the trains/busses. But your kidding yourself if you think stumping out £1000's on insurance will pay off just because it will be 10% off next year.

swiftcover is the cheapest ive ever found. add someone on (like mum ao dad) as a named driver on your policy.
you have to keep shopping around. i was getting quotes of 800 ish for my van and after a week of really irritating calls and internet searches ive got it down to 170 fully comp with all the trimmings.

Premiums for young male drivers are way in excess of the risk they present.

Lol. Working in the insurance industry – apparently not.

because it will be 10% off next year.

i shall restate – first year 1200 – second year 280 – age 22

age 23 van = 450

just ran through a quote for the same van with 3 years ncb and age 24 – still 450 insurance hiked just after i got my van !

yes, but you've paid £1500, if you'd waited a year anyway it would have been lower as you were over 21.

At 18-21 I could have insured a rust bucket fiat panda/nova/106 for £1200, at 22 with no NCD and no driving history the same cars are ~£310. With a years NCD (~10%) that's exactly what you paid £280.

Try looking at a old(er) car – my 1st MX-5 was an H-reg and as such qualified for classic car insurance. Bought from a specialist broker through the owners club it was stupidly low – from memory sub-£200 for a 21 year old, parked on road in Kent, fully comp. I think I had to pay £20 subs to join the club but got a discount on the policy that more than covered that outlay. It's the wrong time of year to buy one but last time I looked you can get an early MX-5 / Eunos for under £2K if you look around. Again, worth going via the Owners Club – member's cars tend to be very well looked after.

EDIT: and that was a Japanese import too. Supposedly more expensive to insure.

you ever tried gettingto mountain mayhem on the bus though …..

1200 quid was worth it for the freedom

22-1 is 21 – i was 21 when the first policy was taken out …

with me and all my mates of similar age 1 years ncb makes more difference than age. everyone i know has more than halfed insurance costs by getting 1 years ncb – unless they have upgraded – i have 21 year old mates driving pulsar GTTIs for 1200 a year

hmmm, maybe it varies, but I've not found any of my quotes dropping by much next year despite having a years NCB whereas friends having their 21st/22nd birthdays (seems to be variable when the prices drop depending on the insurer) and I know one friend who is going car'less over the summer as the premium is halved after their 25th in September (previous car was written off by someone else earlier in the year).