subject: Does Car Insurance Punish the Young? [print this page] Does Car Insurance Punish the Young? Does Car Insurance Punish the Young?
Few would argue that young drivers don't exactly receive the best value when buying car insurance. If you're below the age of 25, you will often find yourself paying a massive mark-up when compared to your more experienced fellow road users. However, is this done to punish the young? Far from it.
Insurance is an industry built on statistical data. An insurer needs to find a way to accurately judge each person's individual risk rating. However, this is often based on rather sweeping personal factors, including age. The unfortunate thing for young drivers is that their peers are causing incidents that result in claims. The statistical data in fact is quite damning; with a third of male drivers claiming for a written off vehicle in their first year and around 25% of all death by dangerous driving convictions involving drivers under the age of 20.
Therefore it doesn't matter how competent you are as a driver, you will always be tainted by the fact that your age group is statistically the riskiest to insurers. Your first policy could, as a direct consequence, cost well in excess of 1,000, making insurance simply unattainable for most particularly when factoring in other rising costs.
Unfortunately there is no solution on the horizon for young motorists. For as long as this peer group continues to be involved in serious claims in high volume, it will always be tarnished. But this isn't a tax on the young, created to teach drivers a lesson, it is simply a question of raw data.
Until recently men and women were treated as polar opposites, again not because of females being remarkably better drivers as a rule, but because males are involved in larger claims. However a recent European ruling appears to be putting an end to this, with insurers unable to calculate cover using gender as a factor.
The only way that you can truly hope to reduce your annual premiums is by avoiding claims at all costs. By doing so you will start to accumulate a no claims bonus, which is the insurers' way of judging individual driving ability and risk factor. The cost of cover won't exactly plummet, but it should at least decrease in time.
You can also help your chances of finding affordable car insurance by taking an advanced driving course such as Pass Plus. This form of accredited certification will indicate to your insurer that you are a strong driver and responsible with it too. But whilst this can encourage personalised discounts, your demographic will still be keeping cover artificially high.
The age of 25 is generally the turning point for young drivers. This is where you join a more experienced and trustworthy band of drivers, who are perceived as a distinctly lower risk than those who are a matter of months younger. When you reach this milestone you can expect to see significant discounts which, coupled with no claims bonuses and advanced driver training certification, can really help to drive down the cost of car ownership.
Therefore car insurance isn't punishing the young, just as it doesn't needlessly target those who have a higher annual mileage, park it in the street or leave it in areas that are considered high risk due to their crime rate. It's simply that the statistics are working against youthful inexperience and the cold hard truth is that they are far more likely to make a claim, and a significant one at that, than any other age bracket. It is this above all other factors that is causing insurers to charge drivers below the age of 25 more than any other demographic.
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