GEORGE FRYER: A friend of mine has just bought his first year’s car insurance costing him £2,600.
A little over two years ago I was in the same boat, although when I got a quote for the same type of car it was at half the price he received. (The car being a VW Polo third gen 2001, typ 6N2)
Compared to the quotes I was getting two years ago insurance prices for young drivers have gone through the roof, when they were already steep enough. I thought it might be interesting to see how much it would cost for a first years insurance on my Fiat Punto now compared to then. A couple of years ago my insurance cost around £1350, the cheapest I can get now is £1564.49 (for the same insurer I used then it would now be £1749.32). That’s up £210 (or £400 for the same insurer).
After a little research getting quotes from different comparison sites, the cheapest quote I could get for my friends car was £790 and that’s without a black box. If I opted for a black box with the same insurer they’d charge me £92 extra! I thought telematics were meant to make your insurance cheaper? Especially for young drivers anyway.
I also got a quote for a first time insurance policy with three points on my licence (for speeding) to see what difference it would make. It added roughly £300 to the cost of my insurance (although a previous quote made little to no difference).
My last insurance renewal for my Fiat cost me £499, almost £300 less than for my friends car and this is still with a black box (without was an extra £60).
When using my friends DOB and the date he passed his test, the cheapest quote I got (for the VW) was £2,165.39. Then without a black box the cheapest quote from the same comparison site was £5,058.90, although another site quoted me £3,125.31. Then the same company he’s insured with quoted me £2,312.65. Two years ago I was quoted similar prices for both the Fiat and the VW.
The recommend amount of driving time before your test is around 40 hours and average cost of a driving lesson £25, so say you pay for 20 hours of those lessons, that’s £500. The other 20 with a parent, which needs insurance, say £400. A theory test cost £23 and your practical £62, add all that together & you’ve got £985 before you’ve even got the chance of getting on the road by yourself.
A quick browse on Autotrader told me that the average Polo typ 6N2 cost roughly £900, add insurance to all that (£2,165) and you’ve got £4,050, that’s over £4,000 and we haven’t even got Road Tax or a MOT yet.
At the age of 17/18, still in full time education, how can young people be expected to afford this? Quite frankly it’s laughable and the price of insurance is only going up…
