Safe Speed Forums

Would love to see any Ins Co yearly figures and all stats showing worst ar / age etc for accidents and accident types too.

Would it be possible for the loading to go against you when you have not owned your own car as they see it as an unknown 'risk' at your location ?
About all I can imagine at the minute ! I fail to see why they cannot link up with your work and not see your record - why shouldn't your Company car records help you with your independent insurance records ?

I also think that young or inexperienced drivers should receive reductions after completing (esp) defensive type driving / riding courses - surely if they are bothered then why not help to improve standards.
Also why are the young drivers if they cannot afford even the cheap runabout cars like 20-25 yr old one's not one's that are merely 10 yrs old, after all a car only worth £200 with simple mechanics is easier to repair and replace. I know the 2nd hand market is low and discouraged but it is is still there !
I can easily understand how tough it can be for everyone to pay for all the car bills from all classes and levels of employment and unemployment.
There has always been the loading in case one hits an expensive car, but I doubt that this is common. Be good to find out though !

I think that the tough job market has been getting worse for quiet some time and I see even those in work finding it harder to keep themselves above water too. Stressed people do not make for better drivers or workers. This nation is one of the worst for being in debt too which is not good.

There used to be a rule in the UK that said if you paid a certain sum (it was £20K I believe in the 80's) that you didn't then have to pay for insurance annually, I have no idea if it still exists ...

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

Driving a 20 yr old banger frankly makes zero difference for a youngster these days, if anything it may load your premium even more since without modern safety features they may be even more likely to hit something expensive.*

With the cost of repairs now being so extortionate, the car the youngster drives really does make little difference, unless it's a model with a really good history of not being driven into things, hence why it's now cheaper to get insured on a Mondeo than a Saxo.

Just look at the repair costs in the "more insane techichrap" thread and it's quite easy to see that the main consideration is what you hit, rather than replacing your £500 Corsa.

Oh and the only insurance companies that offer a discount for pass plus or IAM are the ones that put a loading on your policy for not having pass plus or IAM, thus it means these companies were previously more expensive and are now the same price as the others.

From a purely financial perspective, ie. ignoring the benefits of extra lessons, pass plus is completely worthless to a just passed 17yr old. Yes you can argue that with pass plus they may not have had that crash on the M6 but that's something that isn't taken into consideration at the time. It's just something you spend money and time on for no reduction in your cheapest quote.


As for employment. If you're unemployed, aren't in a great area for public transport, and happen to own a car, then a job interview comes up in the next town. You can't afford to insure or tax your car. There aren't any police on the roads these days, just cameras. You really want to ensure you turn up for the interview on time. It's easy to see how it would be tempting to just drive uninsured. If you can just get the job then you can insure and tax the car, maintain it properly etc. Oh wait you don't get paid for the first month, better just carry on driving and hope you don't get caught. Most will then "go legit" at this point, but some will think "why bother. I've not been caught and I haven't even seen a copper once this month. I'll be £200 a month better off this way."



*lets not derail this into whether ABS etc. are necessary. Today's youngsters are taught in ABS equipped cars and have no idea how to do an emergency stop properly. I think the only exception to the 20yr old bangers being equally risky rule is for cars that are considered classics. People who own, say, a Mk2 Golf GTI probably appreciate that car a lot and really don't want to crash it.

Stupidest comment heard *so far* this winter:

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Or they could do the right thing and get a taxi to the next town. Or set out earlier. I know someone who did just that and ended up being prosecuted for it so couldn't afford to insure a car for many years so he went without. There a police on the roads, at least around Stoke there are. See them all the time. Cheshire police hang around the motorway junctions picking people off to talk to. PT is bad so everyone gets cars. If all the uninsured actually used PT then it might actually become economical to have more routes from those suburbs. There's car sharing too now. I can't imagine this mythical person doesn't have a single friend in the world that couldn't offer them a lift to the interview or know someone that could.

Those that drive uninsured are probably the ones that can't wait for the extra biscuit....

Certainly when I started work I could not afford a car and having tried all options, bus train , tube and cycling (too far to walk) I like the bike, so I cycled and I enjoyed the ability to be independent as I hated waiting for buses and no way to get easily from A to B. It is fine if you know the whole area and know the places they mention, but often I didn't just knew the address I had to go to. Anyway I cycled and I enjoyed it (mostly - bar the cold windy days) - I never had a problem dealing with the traffic no matter how busy it got.
It never even occurred to me to ever consider driving without obtaining all the right paperwork.

So is it adults morals that make suggestions to young people ?
Do young people 'think' of this themselves, or is it 'now' common knowledge it is lost into time as to how it 'started'.
How many years has this been going on and is the increase coinciding with speed camera use ?

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

The MIB compensation scheme does mean that no one is totally uninsured. Merely that their insurance is being paid for by other people - the people with policies.

Personally I would be quite happy to pay rather more for my insurance so that there could be a premium cap for younger drivers. Over a lifetime of driving and subsidising children's driving the total outlay wouldn't be much different.

Or why not a subsidy scheme along the lines of student loans, perhaps repayable by a surcharge on future VED.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

If the "everyone has insurance" paid for out of fuel duty/road-tax etc ever happens then you will be paying for Mr/Mstr/Ms/Mrs B.A.D. Driver to drive as they like.
No incentive to improve..since they will be insured whatever.
Young drivers are high-insurance-risk drivers, as are ex-DD drivers...they RIGHTFULLY pay more, since they are responsible for the majority of the claims.
As for the insurers uninsured accident claims....we all pay for that...and it does not pay the uninsured drivers, it pays those who are injured and whose cars are damaged by uninsured drivers...ie: It pays US...
Whatever happens, whichever scheme is chosen, WE will still be paying for the feckless and foolish.
Get used to it. It is not going to change ever.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

I am able to give them details of my previous employers fleet managers and the insurers for the respective companies fleets. The insurers I have spoken to are not interested - why, I rather suspect that given the option:

a. they will have to do some work which will result in them having to charge a lesser premium or
b. ignoring my previous driving history and earning nearly double the premium that my level of risk would cost me.

They are going to go for b as it is the easy option and earns them more money, it's a legal rip off!

I've spoken to a few brokers who have told me that if I get a letter from my previous employer stating my driving record with them I will get a reduction for that but I still will not get the premium that an owner driver with my history would get.




Very true, amongst the most expensive quotes I've had have been those who 'give discounts' for IAM, ROADA etc and have been advertised through the IAM magazine.




This is exactly the argument I'm hearing from younger friends just left uni with no money struggling to get a job, most would love to use PT but simply cannot afford to either in the cost or reliability stakes.

And as for taking a taxi to the next town in Chelmsford it costs over £6-00 to get from one end of chelmsford to the other one way. The nearest towns with industrial ares for work are around the 10 - 12 miles away mark - one way cost by taxi £25-00 plus. Hell it would cost about £12-00 by bus !

The jobcentre (or whatever they are now calling themselves now) will not pay taxi fees if there is a PT link. So if you are unemployed it gets pretty hard and the temptation to drive uninsured is high.

The days of employment being within walking distance are gone for many, with out of town retail and business parks (especially wthose with poor PT, footpath and cycle path links) there is little option but to drive.




From the friends of mine that I've spoken to there is the view that the proportion of risk to premium charged is disproportionate.
Insurers claims of poverty in the motor insurance sector doesn't seem to hold up when you look at the profits being shown in company finacial reports.
Insurance companies manner of dealing with claims either it be through deliberate de-valuing of cars (I've had five friends who have had cars written off - a mix of fault and no fault accidents who have all had cars de-valued by insurers in every case the insurance ombudsman at least doubled the insurers initial settlement) or shoddy repairs by 'insurance co approved' repairers.

The younger generation can in some cases be very savvy consumers and when they see things in adverts from insurers like 'we don't use price comparison websites' they have twigged that because 9 times out of 10 it's because they have dear premiums.

The overwhelming view (amongst friends) is that whilst insurance is a legal requirement it is also a legalised con, and a lot of my younger friends trust HMG even less than they trust the insurance companies.

One idea that was put to me as a solution is that it should be run on a non profit basis with a claims fund set a certain level, if the fund is close to being depleted then premiums go up to take account of this and take a little extra to boost the fund, if the fund is ok the premiums stay the same - likewise any attempt by drivers to improve thier skills should be GENUINLY and I mean genuinly rewarded with a x% reduction rather than an overinflated price to start with.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

You could work it like a credit union.

The deliberate devaluing of cars has been going on for ages. Know someone that had their Evo II blue lagos valued at 6k as the guy saw a fake on on pistonheads for that figure! He told them they were talking out of their hat and had to hide the car to stop them taking it away to write it off. He got it repaired in the end after it was valued properly. Ditto someone else with a skyline worth 15k, insurance reckoned again it was 6k!

Until there is competition in the market so that young people and everyone else switches to another company to take the business from the rip off merchants nothing will change. If they're not being undercut and actually want the business they're not going to change.

Another possibility would be to have an insurance product with a claims cap eg one claim and you're back to the big rip off merchants but then you'd get people lying. A monetary cap might be another idea but I don't know whether you can even do that legally.

The only answer for young people is to drive more carefully then they won't have to pay so much. If you can get them to harrass their bad driving peers rather than admiring them then maybe premiums would come down.

I must be lucky. My Honda was an unsaleable shed when it was damaged by vandals. But the company paid me out £1200, the book price for a nice clean model. Then sold it back to me for £50 and I repaired it for nothing but an afternoons work.

What does annoy me is the fact once an insurance company has accepted a claim they spend like drunken sailors. I damaged a Peugot on a concealed bollard so I went to my local small repair shop who said he could repair it for £300 cash if I didn't mind a scrap yard bumper, which was fine because it was an old slightly tatty car anyway. I then toyed with an insurance claim and they insisted that the job be done at an "approved" body shop 25 miles away at a cost of £1500.

It seems to me that the real winners in the insurance game are these "approved" body shops.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

And then people wonder why everyone claims whiplash these days?

When my GFs car was written off after being rear ended, even with a (genuine) personal injury claim, we still didn't break even getting her a replacement car of the equivalent spec. The money was almost sufficient to buy back the remains of her car, and purchase a similar condition example with a nearly dead engine. We then had to swap over most of the mechanicals and sell off the remaining bits that were usable. Still made a loss.

Millions of uninsured motorists have until the end of the year to buy appropriate cover or face an unprecedented crackdown from police and the courts – including fines of up to £1,000 – even if their vehicle is not being driven.

Plans published recently by the Department for Transport (DfT) will soon make it an offence purely to be the registered keeper of an uninsured vehicle, while police will not have to prove it was in use.

The Continuous Insurance Enforcement proposals, due to be introduced in early 2011, will replace existing laws, whereby a prosecution can take place only if an uninsured motorist is caught at the wheel of a car. An initial penalty of £100 will be applied, followed by further fines of up to £1,000 levied by a magistrate's court.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/ja ... government

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nigel_bytes

As long as the vehicle is not on a public highway, and is declared SORN, you do not need insurance.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

And that's the silly part. With that we're back to square 1: it will again have to be proven it was "in use".

Put 3rd party on the fuel. Doing so will be relatively unfair for some, but much fairer for others; there is a good chance everyone would be better off absolutely. Anything else is enforcement for the sake of it.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

There is a still an inconsistency with this. What if the vehicle has been off the road since before SORN?? It would be easier if SORN could be declared for multiple years at a time for long term off the roadness. It is a pain to do it annually and people with multiple cars who don't get a reminder for one of them could easily fall foul of this new legislation. The last postal strike has shown how chaotic things get if essential services like post are disrupted.

Also the uninsured drivers with half a brain will just declare the car sorn so that it won't need insurance tax or MOT making it easier to evade being caught as again the vehicle will have to be seen on the road to be causing the offence. Cleverer criminals will just change plates to ones of an insured vehicle and drive around completely unaffected as they won't be flagged by ANPR and won't be stopped by a traffic cop.

ANPR flags multiple plates if a question mark is placed against one.
The national anpr centre can run a search on the database against any number and trace where it has been, and the times it was at those places.
Practically all large filling stations now provide data to the anpr system as well as many of the installed cctv systems.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing