300,000 Young Drivers without Insurance on UK roads

According to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau in a report released today, there has been a twenty percent drop in the number of people driving without car insurance in the UK.
However, there are still a third of a million uninsured drivers on the roads in the UK without adequate car insurance cover.
And it’s young drivers who are the biggest culprits when it comes to breaking the law and putting other road users at risk of loss.

The Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) reports:

Young drivers are the least likely to be insured with new figures suggesting the problem is worse in Britain than any country in Western Europe.

One in five uninsured drivers is aged between 17 and 20.

300,000 young drivers in that age group breaking the law when they get behind the wheel of a car. Many have taken their driving test and hold a full licence but claim they cannot afford the rates charged by Car Insurance Companies

The Motor Insurers’ Bureau Chief executive Ashton West said

“We’ve made significant progress and seen a 20% reduction but we’ve still got a pretty embarrassing record in the UK and there’s a lot more that we need to do to rid the country of this problem.

“Young drivers present a higher risk so they end up paying more.

“The cost of insurance is higher, therefore some of them see that as beyond what they’re prepared to pay and they take the risk.”

Uninsured driving is not helped by the courts who typically hand out  a £200 fine and six points on your licence.
When you consider that the average young drivers car insurance premium is in the region of £2000 per year, and that the car may only be worth £500 and the fine £200  – you can see why taking a risk with uninsured driving is attractive to a certain type of young driver.

However what they fail to realise is that when they are caught they will be paying for this in high premiums for rest of their lives.

Cheap Young Drivers Car Insurance is available from a variety of providers at Car Insurance TV. Compare car insurance prices and shop around for cheaper quotes!

So on my way over to the Insurance Blog offices what do I hear on the BBC Radio One lunchtime news program for young people – Newsbeat – a very interesting  programme about the outrageous costs of car insurance for young drivers.

Being the BBC they have gone all multi media and you can follow the show at BBC Newsbeat  Facebook and listen to and download the podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat

Listening to many of the comments and reading posts like this….

From Facebook

Chris Kidwell
I’m 22. I’ve been driving for 5 years. I’ve never had an accident. 2 weeks ago a 60 year old man crashed into my car while it was parked. He’s probably got protected insurance cover, and his premium will hardly go up even though he wrote my car off and damaged 2 other cars. I’ve never even come close to an accident in my 5 years, but my high … See moreinsurance policies have probably totalled enough to cover the damage to the other two vehicles, my written off car, and all the hire cars involved… So even though I’m the driver that is least likely to have an accident, my money is more likely to have paid for his irresponsible action. I do feel that young drivers are all tarred with the same brush. There should be a standard amount that all drivers start on (say £900-£1000) a year. Then the premium can increase/decrease accordingly depending on how the driver fares on the road. To charge anyone £3000 a year without knowing whether they are actually a bad driver is wrong.

………………

You’ve got to agree…hey, maybe the kids do have a serious point!

Related posts:

1. The Hidden Costs of Uninsured Drivers in Your Car Insurance Premiums
2. RBS Churchill Car Insurance offers named Young Drivers No claims bonus
3. How to get Car Insurance if your are under 25

We are constantly reminded that the cost of our car insurance premiums are inflated because of insurance fraud and exacerbated by the number of uninsured drivers on the roads! It is certainly true that in the United Kingdom all car insurance companies are required by law to pay into the Motor Insurance Fund (MIF).

This pool of money was designed to protect and recompense the innocent British public, from damage or injury caused by an increasingly large number of uninsured drivers. and accidents involving untraceable hit and run drivers.

The Motor Insurance fund was set up over sixty years ago, immediately following WW2 when the licensing laws and car insurance regulations were still being formulated and yet many of our modern laws were yet to be put onto the UK statute books.

The war years had seen the number of cars and vehicles in the UK rise exponentially, particularly towards the end of the war after the USA joined in, and for the first time British women were systematically taught to drive in their thousands, and indeed even the Queen, Princess Elizabeth as she was at the time, mucked in with driving vehicles of all shapes and sizes and women drove the domestic war effort.

At the end of the war Britain’s roads were beginning to become cluttered and returning troops and foreign bases exacerbated the number of unlicensed cars and drivers on UK roads without car insurance to record levels.

As the number of accidents involving uninsured drivers rose steadily, public outcry forced the government to act and in 1946 a Government ‘Quango’ called the Motor Insurers Bureau (MIB) was established to oversee the whole operation of public compensation for damage, where no car insurance covered the costs.

The MID is to this day funded by a proportion of every policy sold, and to date has paid out over £2 billion in total. The MID have calculated that the cost to each of us when we purchase car insurance is an additional £15 to £30 per policy to cover uninsured drivers, which amounts to more than £200 million every year.

Furthermore, recent statistics from the Bureau indicate the problem of driving without car insurance has not declined over the intervening years since its foundation, and show that the UK continues to have a very poor record, with one in every twenty cars on the road being driven without proper car insurance cover.

Breaking down the statistics further, reveals that the amount of damage caused by drivers without car insurance each year far exceeds the amount paid out in claims every year through the risk fund.

It is often difficult to receive full compensation even if you have identified the uninsured driver, who may well have been prosecuted by the police, and you make a claim through the MIB.

A satisfied claim, that is those claims that are paid out, usually only occur when a particular claim has run the full course of the law and a judgement handed down.

In a case of a hit and run driver without car insurance who is unidentified, the MIB does not pay all legal costs, which can quickly run into thousands, but merely makes a contribution with a deduction to cover the balance of legal costs and expenses.

Thus the hidden costs and misery caused by the actions of those who choose to drive without car insurance is far greater than the official statistics of two hundred million pounds every year.

It is with these figures in mind that the MIB became the centralised point of a new database, the Motor Insurance Database, created at the turn of the century. The database is updated daily with details of every person and their car, who buys a car insurance policy. This information is now immediately available to all police forces throughout the Country, who through automatic number plate recognition systems, can instantly send a car registration number to the MID.

This allows the system to immediately indicate to a police office in the field, cars that are being driven and the driver has valid car insurance in force.

Original Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?Car-Insurance

Related posts:

1. 12 Car Insurance Money Saving Tips For Much Cheaper Premiums
2. RBS Churchill Car Insurance offers named Young Drivers No claims bonus
3. Specialist classic car insurance – cheaper than ever!