basingwerk wrote:
SafeSpeed wrote:
However, speeding fines are indicative of exposure - drivers who do greater mileages are on average more likely to pick up speeding fines and on average more likely to have crashes. So more fines does mean more risk, but frequently not because the behaviour is a risky one.
If you get crashed into, it is irrelevant whether the cause of the risk was because of poor behaviour or excessively high mileage, isn’t it?
I don't think so for two reasons. First high mileage can never be a cause of a crash, and therfore cannot be the cause of the risk either. It is simply a proxy for the amount of risk you have due to your exposure (to use Safe Speed's term). Secondly, you are assuming that a high mileage driver is more likely to cause a crash, but that is not necessarily so. High mileage drivers are more likely to
experience a crash, but that could esily be of someone else's making - a low mileage TIBMIN for example. You can be a terrible driver irrespective of the amount of miles you do each year, but of course if I do 50000 miles a year my chances of finding your car in my back seat is greater than if I only do 25000, which in turn is greater than if I only do 12500 and so on. That doesn't change no matter how good a driver I am or may become in the future. It's kind of like cancer - all other things being equal the longer you live the more likely you'll get it.
basingwerk wrote:
To achieve the same low risk as a low mileage driver, a high mileage driver must be much better behaved. Luckily for me, my insurance company penalises high-mileage drivers, so that I can get a better deal.
No, the behaviour of the high mileage driver really doesn't help him avoid encounters with bad drivers, though the experience of the extra miles may just help them prevent an encounter becoming a collision. That'd be ironic as in that case it would be your putatively low risk driver avoiding a crash solely because they had the good fortune to encounter a high mileage driver, but I don't want to get into scenario building. I just said
may.As I explained above, it's a numbers game. Look at it in regards to something other than crashes. Breakdowns perhaps? Would you not agree that your chances of breaking down increase with mileage? At an extreme you can avoid breakdowns entirely by never leaving the house, but leaving aside the fact that that isn't terribly desirable it tells you absolutely nothing about how well maintained you keep your car (or not, as the case may be).
basingwerk wrote:
This shows that a good way to increase road safely is not to drive at all, or to drive much less. Where do you say that on this ‘road safety’ web site?
Lesson in insurance (from bloke with a harem of lovely sexed -up ravers (apart form Wildy
But in any case - find this kind of carry on will deter rather than encourage kids to take out insurance. Better to encourage Pass Plus and further training rather than focus on one element only.
The only clause I agree with is the drink/drugs one -as it may deter. But for this to work the borker must surely have an onus to point out all these traps in the small print and ensure the insured fully understands this before he signs the agreement.
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). Of course, he is a perfect driver too. But unfortunately Mr Perfect is not perfectly happy about his insurance premium, which has just gone up. The insurance company has told him that this is because his job no longer requires him to do 12000 miles a year, but more like 25000. He pointed out to them that he is the same person and his driving abilities are unchanged (being perfect at dealing with other people he was far too modest to mention that his driving skills are, in fact, perfect) regardless of how many miles he drives. However, the view of the insurance company is that Mr Perfect lives in an imperfect world, and the fact that he now does 25000 miles a year means that the risk of someone hitting him is now just over double what it was last year. Perfect or not his exposure to risk posed by others has increased, even though the risk he himself poses to others is the same as before. Zero actually. He is a perfect driver after all.
. Actually I'd far rather do the hoovering than watch a football match - I really do find it that uninteresting. But I know I'm in a minority, and Mini-me certainly doesn't agree. She goes to matches from time to time, though more often she watches them on the big screen in the local pub or at home. Nothing's actually happened yet, but since she does go to matches sometimes and she does sometimes watch them in pubs packed with (a) lots of other football fans and (b) booze, there's a better chance that she'll encounter a massive drunken set to than I will. Now, what does that tell you about Mini-me's character? Does it tell you that she's the type of girl who'll smash the bottom off a beer bottle on the edge of a bar before sticking it in someone? Or does it tell you nothing more than that she's got an interest that sometimes brings her into the same environments as the sort of people who do smash the bottoms off beer bottles? For the record she's a sweet kid, a non-smoking teetotaller who studies rather harder than she plays and is waiting to find out which uni she got into. And in the unlikely event that she lurks in these forums and has worked out Gatsobait's secret identity, she's probably extremely embarassed as well. 
Getting a bit unworkable, so let's say every million miles to make it once every four decades. Still not bad though 
, but let's say that about once every 500000 miles a TIBMIN hits you. That means that you'll be involved in 5 crashes every 40 years and make an insurance claim about every 8 years and 10 months. But only one will be your fault. Now lets double your mileage. All other things being equal you now have an average of two own fault crashes every forty years, but are going to be involved in 8 more that are caused by someone else. And your insurer is going to be unhappy as you're now making claims at the rate of one every four years. Clearly the relative size of the risk components doesn't change at all - initially you caused 1 in 5 of the collisions you were involved in, and now you cause 2 in 10. What has changed in real terms is that while you are likely to cause one additional accident in that forty year period you are likely to be on the receiving end of FOUR more. But the insurance company has to deal with all of them regardless, and of course if there's any two way finger pointing they usually take the easy option of splitting the costs 50:50 with the other person's insurer. That's why low mileage drivers pay less. 
Seriously, I think it all depends on whether or not the data really is collected and whether or not it would actually be used. It's not practical to start ripping bits of the car out, so the only solution is to examine the small print of policies and cancel them if you don't like the terms. I expect the cheaper the policy the harder the company will try to get out of having to pay claims, so it might be worth paying extra for one that isn't so restrictive. The obvious worry for drivers is that all insurers will end up doing it, but in turn the worry for the insurance companies is that one of them might not and get a lot more business when it becomes common knowledge.
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