http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12606610
The startling thing about this article is not that men are charged more for insurance (duh) but that an 18 year old would need to pay £3400 a year to insure a 2003 Corsa. That is insane. My first year's insurance (on a Mk3 Escort in 1994) cost me £600. And I thought that was steep. There is no way I could have afforded to learn to drive if it cost me that much to insure the car.
Perhaps we're about to see a generation of non-drivers, or at least one where only the Haves drive. That should sit nicely with the generation that can no longer afford a home and the one that can't afford to get educated.
Motor insurance, by the way, is pure crookery. It's a compulsory part of owning a car (ie living outside London) yet is not regulated in any way. New Zealand has a compulsory 3rd party personal insurance scheme that is part of your annual road tax. In 2002 it cost about £30 for a year. I'm not a big fan of government run schemes but any UK government that wants to win votes should just introduce a similar scheme here. It would instantly get rid of all those spurious whiplash claims that inflate your premiums and would mean that anyone who bothered to buy road tax would be insured.
No comments:
Post a Comment