"Anyone in Car Insurance" ..... Part deux.

Following on from sage advice received re. the Liverpool bump early November, I now have another predicament.

Last Friday morning the **** who lives opposite - handbrake fails on his car. Rolls down his drive, misses our Mini by inches but takes the garden wall and pillar out.

He waved it off with a "ah, we'll sort it through insurance".

So, assuming he is insured, do I hit him with a couple of quotes and tell him to get it sorted through his car insurance pronto ....... or

Do I go to my Buildings & Contents insurance with quotes and get them to do the legwork with his Car Insurance bods? I'm not particularly keen on risking my premium taking a hit, protected or not.

Thanks again, wise ones.

 

I'd report it to your buildings and contents insurance ASAP. Reporting it doesn't oblige you to follow through and make a claim. But if you do then they should pursue his motor insurance to claim everything back including your excess if there is one. If they do make a full recovery it shouldn't affect your premiums.

 

Apparently
Copied
if a car damages your property, the car's insurance company will usually contact you if a claim is made:

Guessing from that he would have to contact his insurers.
But it also says report it to the police. I'm guessing good advice for if follow ups are required.


.

 

Changing tack - any advice for insuring young drivers?

My lad is seventeen, doing lessons, passed theory and will do his test early next year.

We’ve got him a car ready for when he’s passed, cheap through family. 13 year old Chevrolet Aveo, nothing flash.

Insurance quotes are eye watering to say the least.

Done the usual shopping about, adding me and the Mrs as named drivers; managed to get down to £3,500 a year from a starting point of £6,000 (for a car that’s cost £800). It would actually be cheaper to insure now on provisional but we’ve been advised against, because as soon as he passes, the increase would essentially be as much as a full year on a full licence.

It is in the ball park we were expecting, we’d expected £2k to £3k (this is third party only as well by the way) - though is there anything else to try / do?

 

Sadly most insurance companies are now admitting even a no fault claim will affect your premiums. Mine was in the terms and conditions this time.

 

Same as mate, I’ve had a “no fault” claim where it still counts against you.

 

That can be the case for motor insurance. Not sure about buildings and contents.

 

hi troff

cheapest you will probably find is a company called ticker they are really good, google them

 

Just because I like to avoid insurance if possible… how bad is the damage? Could you get some cement and build the wall back up? Saying that, he’s almost certainly going to be claiming for his car so may as well just get it done through his insurance.

 

They won’t quote

 

Unfortunately, I think £2k+ is the norm for new drivers under 21. The only other way really which you might not have considered is to get insurance that monitors driving, either with an app or telematics box. His premium should drop quicker with those as it monitors his driving. My brother had one when he passed his test at 18, his first premium was about £2100 (the same as he'd paid for his car), and by the second renewal, he was getting quotes of around £600. Try contacting companies who aren't on comparison sites such as Direct Line and Adrian Flux. I'd recommend insurances which track driving so long as he doesn't need the car for work, as they often have mileage limits and penalise motorway and night time driving.

 

You may be right there mate

 

The value of his car is totally irrelevant I am afraid. The outcome would still be the same if his car cost a pound. At third party only, they aren't even covering the loss on that car. They are more concerned with the possibility of multiple life changing injuries to third parties if he causes a pile up while doing something like this (not that I am saying he would, but the stats show young people to have the highest accident rates, caused both by their inexperience, their exuberance and their lack of awareness of their mortality).

BBC News - Laughing gas crash: Calls for driving licences reform after three killed - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgxn4zm0keo

My sister is a finance manager of a large insurer and she told me once of a story of an 18 year old driving too fast approaching the brow of a hill, unaware of the fact that just the other side, the traffic was stacked up. The subsequent pile up cost the lives of 3 people and gave 3 others life changing injuries. 3 years later, the claim was still not fully settled and their costs were 2 million and rising. It's actually more expensive for the insurer if a third party survives with catastrophic injuries than if they die.

I think @Archey has the right suggestion - only way to get it down is to go with a black box company.

Strange as it sounds, I think the idea of graduated licenses that place restrictions on new drivers would actually be good news for their insurance as I think a lot of incidents occurred when young kids are showing off to a car full of mates so if they are not allowed passengers for example, it would help cut the risk and therefore the premiums.

 

I've always been curious about the stats so looked it up and found this on the government website.

Is it just me or does the chart they show not match the words they use?




They appear to be trying to demonise the young males but isn't the highest group the elderly women?

 

Well the numbers they quote seem to match the graph, so there are no inaccuracies, but yes they are focusing on the young male drivers in the wording. While the rate of accidents per billion miles is higher for females over 86 according to the graph, you would imagine that the actual numbers of accidents are low because the number of 86 year old plus drivers on the road must be pretty small, certainly in comparison to young male drivers.

It's actually quite shocking looking at the graph just how much higher the accident rate is for 18-24 year old males. I didnt realise the difference was that pronounced. As the wording points out, 18-24 males - 4 times the risk of all drivers over 25.

 

I get what you’re saying about the words not matching and I really think something needs to be done about elderly drivers who absolutely should not be driving and who would never be given a licence if they had to pass a test again now. Separate to that, is it that elderly women, being probably the frailest group) are more likely to die from a car accident, even quite a tame one, whereas for arguably the fittest group of people to die, if would require a far more intense collision?

 

The other thing that is pretty surprising in that graph is the suggestion that from age 36 onwards, pretty consistently, females are more prone to accidents than males. I thought we were always told that statistically, females are safer drivers?

 

My mum is 80 in March and I am dreading the day I have to tell her she should hand her license back. She only does around 3000 miles a year but her quality of life will suffer when she can't drive any more.

 

We've literally just done it for my lad

Bought a Mazda 2 for 1200. Managed to get insurance with Hastings direct (with a black box) for 1300. Both me and his mum are as named drives on it too. This I think knocked off about 300 as well.

We found that once he had actually passed his test, quotes were totally different than what we were trying to find beforehand. (Ie whilst learning we made a couple of quotes as though he had passed, and they were coming out at 2k ish)

So we were expecting 2k as a ball park, so was mightily surprised when we got fully comp for 1300 for the full year.....

Good luck though, that first year for anyone these days is an absolute nightmare to arrange

 

Is it saying more prone to cause accidents or more likely to die in an accident? All safety features are tested on male crash dummies and designed based on men. It also doesn’t show who caused the accident. If a man crashed into me and I died it’d be a kicker for it to be used as an argument that women are worse drivers. We need more information to extrapolate anything other than that’s the numbers of people who died.