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Car Insurance - A Cautionary Curfew
Insurance is very, very expensive for a certain group of drivers. Unfortunately, statistics prove that newly qualified young men are a particularly poor insurance risk. A risk that rises significantly between the hours of 11pm and 6am.
Naturally all parents want to help their children to gain a degree of independence and the vast majority of 17 year olds are keen to learn to drive. Several years of running their offspring around and keeping their social diaries, as well as your own, may now be coming to an end and many parents take the decision to help with the insurance costs. The parents of girls come out a little better off, financially, but for those with sons read on.
It seems that young males are an amazing 62 times more likely have convictions for dangerous driving than young women. Out of over 7000 convictions for dangerous driving or causing death or bodily harm, 33% were attributable to young men aged between 17 and 20.
The worst time for these offences and for accidents is during the night-time. Between 11pm and 6am, the chances of young male drivers being involved in an accident which causes serious injury or death increases ten-fold. Having had their driving lessons during the day time, night-time driving is new these youngsters. The quiet, open roads tempt them into driving far too fast and losing control of the car. Often the presence of passengers in the car add to the pressure to show their driving prowess and a high proportion of these accidents are single vehicle ones, where no other driver is involved. They are simply down to lack of experience.
The insurers MoreThan are getting the message out to parents regarding these facts and will cross-sell their new DriveTime policy to parents who contact their call-centre staff. By persuading youngsters to leave the car at home during the most accident-likely hours, they aim to cut both the costs of insurance and the risk of horrendous accidents. MoreThan aims to reduce the premiums of drivers aged 18 to 25 by 40% in return for an agreement not to drive in the critical hours. The basic cost of insurance will be priced in the usual way, based on age, experience, type of vehicle, etc., around 60% of this normal charge will form the basis of the insurance quote. Often this will be paid for by parents. What then happens is that, if the car is used between 11pm and 6am, there will be a charge of 25 per journey, paid for via a direct debit.
In order to implement these charges, a black box will be fitted to the car. This is at the insurers expense. The black box is small, non obtrusive and very clever. Using GPS (global satellite system) technology it can track drivers movements 24 hours a day.
Norwich Union is another insurer using technology to offer more reasonably priced insurance. Again a black box is fitted and by supplying the information this system can gather into a central database over a secure mobile network, a driver can be assessed on his or her driving using a range of facts. In time it is thought that this method will benefit less frequent and cautious drivers.
This, then, may point a way to the future as far as insurance is concerned. For more help and advice, go online, seek out an experienced broker and see what the future offers.
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