Insurance woes for new drivers!

[mk1rally]

I know this is a common story, but I must share our pain!! (shared, halved and all that!)

After looking around for the cheapest car to insure for a provisional and then new driver we bought a MPI sportpack. It was the same insurance cost as the Mini Seven MPI, despite being the Cooper version (a classic case of badge engineering, its the same,even slower performance!) but with a bit more cred in a teenagers eyes!!

We got reasonable quotes investigating around May for £790 before passing, £1300 after, pretty much the same as we got when we first started looking for a car. Only to be confronted with massive hikes recently when the cheapest we can get it is just over £3000!!

Now I appreciate that they are high risk but it makes you see why we have so many uninsured on the road (not that I would even allow her to do that).

Now we face the prospect of selling her beloved mini, to fund something a little cheaper to insure (it's Gp2!!). Even a Gp1 car like a matiz or Ka are not far off the same figure and the only way we can bring it down to a reasonable £1500 (!!) is to get he a 70's mini 1000. Now that's without airbags and side impact bars (for what they are worth on the later cars).

Thats over £100 a month insurance (and we want her to pay most of that as she has a well paid part time job and she needs to understand the cost of things)

We are not helping our young ones to get to work and dig us out of this youth unemployment rut are we??

[almondgreen]

A stupid question from Germany.
The insurance costs for new drivers are more expencive here too, but as a young
driver You insure the car over father or mother and get it cheaper.
After some years this insurance can be put on the drivers name.

Is this not possible in UK ?

[1071 S]

Oz works the same as Germany - my 28yo has FINALLY bought her own insurance....

When she was younger we bought "third party property" insurance. This is much cheaper and covers any damage you may do to others. If the kid crashes their car into a Roller, the millionaire gets paid and the wrecked Mini goes down the back of the shed until they can raise the cash to have it fixed....

Cheers

[mk1rally]

That used to be the case here and you still can, but the insurnce premium jumps up to near enough the same price.

I'm currently insured on the Cooper - £170 but if I add my daughter it goes to £2980 !! it works out £70 cheaper overall that my daughter to get her own!

I think the insurance companies wised up to that a while back here I am sure i read somewhere that if they find out you are not the main user even after declaring your child on it, they cancel the insurance. If you have a accident, I bet that is one of the things they would really look into.

Classic car insurance (on the policy's I have) start at 21 years old onwards for the driver and the car has to be post 15 yrs old. Some cars are exempt that as recognised as future classics.

on the quotes we looked at, 3rd party is only say 10-15% cheaper. A bit but not enough!!

[guru_1071]

if a mini is registered as an austin/morris (i.e up to late 1980's) then it can be up to a 1000 pounds cheaper for a young driver to insure it compared to a rover mini.

i guess this is due to the cost of crash repairs & the ease and speed at which later rover stuff is nicked.

the lad who bought my mayfair discovered this out, and was delighted that it was the case...

[dhenry]

I learned to drive when i was 19 (10 years ago) and my insurance on a 1 litre 205 was around £450 if memory serves. Its not just the cost of insurance that's screwing the next generation in the proverbial arse. With property prices at 10 times the national average salary and university fees just being tripled I am not quite sure how the economy can actually continue. Its quite simple to see that nobody under 21 will ever afford to buy anything after paying their car insurance and university fees let alone buying houses. All seems a bit effed up the way I see it. They will all end up living at home till their 40.

[coop12g295]

Unfortunately the statistics for young drivers don't help my mates son (21) who bought my clubman off me last year totaled it last week and closed one of our local roads for 2 1/2 hrs
with about a dozen emergency vehicles.The car he pulled out ended on its roof and amazigly it was only cuts and bruises for all involved

[IAIN]

mk 1rally......... Two and a half years ago I was in this position. I had a 97 standard cooper set aside with the intension of letting my daughter drive it for shows etc. When I looked in to insurance for her it was obvious it wasn't going to happen.

What I got was an old fiat punto ( £400 ) which she learned in and passed her test in ( first time ). It was only third party fire and theft insured it cost £600. After passing we picked up a good 1.2 clio sport, the insurance had about 6 months left, it was upgraded to fully comp. for another £70 !
Now she has just got a 4 year old fiesta 1.4 and has payed £700 for it fully comp. aged 19. This is was with Admiral and now Diamond ( same group ) which have been very good to deal with.

For some strange reason it was cheaper with mum and dad on as named drivers on her policy !

I must admit a feel easier that she isn't driving a mini with the tanks that are on the roads these days.

[steve1071]

I have three sons and run my own insurance brokers, and still don't know how we will afford their insurance in a few years!
The problem with young drivers is they don't have any insurance record and therefore all get tarred with the same brush.

The compensation culture has worsened the situation. The average 'whiplash' claim will pay around £1500 in damages, on top of that the Solicitors fees will be about £5 - 6k. These massive fees are driving a new industry. Insurer's now even send details of a claim where their driver is at fault to Solicitors to get referral fees from them, in the knowledge that they are going to end up paying the claim! Madness you might think, but if they don't get the referral fee someone else will and the injury claims will definitely come in anyway.

Recently the EU have passed a ruling that insurers cannot discriminate by gender. So insurers have to charge the same for young male and female drivers. The boffin's (actuaries) that set the premium are seriously clever number crunchers and the models show young male drivers have more accidents, often with more passengers, all able to claim. When the ruling came through all the industry leaders thought this was absolute madness. Next they will tell us we have to charge the same premium for firework factories and offices. What you will find is female premiums will rise, not male premiums reduce.

The industry needs to find an answer to the issue of massive premiums through innovation, whoever does will make a fortune.

[Pandora]

remove the need for 'insurance', but set a flat fee for all drivers (like the road tax) to cover cost of emergency services etc and make all drivers liable for damage and injury claims resulting from accidents personally through the civil courts.

The problem with this is of course that young folk don't have any assets to sieze, beyond the now badly damaged saxo with the ill fitting bodykit.........

I would suggest a 'modification premium' to target the real group of young drivers who are the problem, but actually, I don't think I like that idea

[pad4]

PAKI's !!!! there milking it all and screwing it up for everyone, my missus just just tapped the bumper of a car belonging to one of our asian friends, nothing but a scratch - it was a 10k insurance claim, car total write off, PAKI had whiplash and was off work with stress (like he was working anyway) - bloody good job it wasnt me that hit him, he would have had proper whiplash and a broken nose to go with it, then I would have driven the pajero over his car as well ..F***in dirty shithead....

Sorry went on a rant there...

PD

[Pandora]

eh, I can't agree with that, and it's bang out of order, surely?.

I'm sure there is perhaps a greater proportion of such bogus claims by lower income / unemployed 'Jeremy Kyle' watchers, who see the adverts from the no win-no fee lawyers on daytime TV, but unless there are stats to back up claims about any ethnic groups claims being higher than another, it's a very unpleasant road to go down?

Al, (the guardian reading liberal / tree hugging hippy)

[pad4]

Whats not to agree with - it happens a lot, its well known, the only thing is im not afraid to say something about it, and if it offends then tuff, it offended me when he lied through his back teeth about everything that happened.

doing all this with insurance is going to result in many more people driving around uninsured and escalating the problem even more - dire times indeed, my sons about to take his test, his girfriends family are moving to carlisle and he was hoping to be able to drive up there, god knows what his insurance is going to be like, I can see whats coming though ...bank of dad...


PD

Only the guilty get offended !!

[RTJ]

As a result of these wankers any SK post code insurance is higher. This is about a mile from me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -jail.html

[steve1071]

One of my commercial clients was involved in an accident with the asian gang that got jail. In fact i'm pretty sure the mercedes in the article was the vehicle involved. The workers in the office overlooking the roundabout had been taking photo's after seeing three incidents in one morning, which led to them being nicked. Each time the driver had got changed and used a different name but had the same pair of horrible yellow trainers on! Even the doctor signing them off work was a relative.

Pad, I see the same story all the time. We had one the other week, tiny knock, a few scratches on the bumpers and the driver refused to get out of the car due to severe whiplash. (Which is odd as whiplash usually takes a couple of days to come out). The fire brigade and ambulance were called and the roof cut off the car, even the ambulance driver said there was f*** all wrong with her. You can probably guess her ethnicity.

[Ronnie]

I have three sons and run my own insurance brokers, and still don't know how we will afford their insurance in a few years!
The problem with young drivers is they don't have any insurance record and therefore all get tarred with the same brush.

The compensation culture has worsened the situation. The average 'whiplash' claim will pay around £1500 in damages, on top of that the Solicitors fees will be about £5 - 6k. These massive fees are driving a new industry. Insurer's now even send details of a claim where their driver is at fault to Solicitors to get referral fees from them, in the knowledge that they are going to end up paying the claim! Madness you might think, but if they don't get the referral fee someone else will and the injury claims will definitely come in anyway.

Recently the EU have passed a ruling that insurers cannot discriminate by gender. So insurers have to charge the same for young male and female drivers. The boffin's (actuaries) that set the premium are seriously clever number crunchers and the models show young male drivers have more accidents, often with more passengers, all able to claim. When the ruling came through all the industry leaders thought this was absolute madness. Next they will tell us we have to charge the same premium for firework factories and offices. What you will find is female premiums will rise, not male premiums reduce.

The industry needs to find an answer to the issue of massive premiums through innovation, whoever does will make a fortune.

I thought the insurance industry was based on risk & statistics!

Therefore if women have less accidents, it does not make any difference, except you can't reduce the premium because of her gender, but you should be able to reduce it because of her risk (or accident record)!

[steve1071]

You're right it is based on risk / stats, but where there is no previous record for young drivers they cannot discriminate by gender, despite the stats that show young male drivers have more accidents than females, obviously other factors like area, car type etc it can change.

[medwaybeat]

I worked with a guy who brought his daughter a brand new Fiesta because it came with 2 years free insurance.

[Gray]

Interesting subject, funny how sexual equality is not something wanted when it comes to car insurance!!

[steve1071]

I worked with a guy who brought his daughter a brand new Fiesta because it came with 2 years free insurance.

Was that recently? Not seen any of those deals in a while.