The Sun is on one of its periodic stir-fests with this story about Ollie Pain, 18, and Harry Smith, 17, who were both killed when the car being driven by Smith (a Clio) left the road on a bend and hit trees and ditch. As if to dot the i and cross the t, the accident also happened at night on a rural road, and it appears that no other car was involved.
The title of the piece is “Young driver and pal are killed rushing to beat 11pm insurance curfew”. The coroner is also in on the act:
Coroner David Dooley said it was likely that the young farmer, of Lower Wick, was trying to get home by 11pm to avoid a £100 fine by insurers Towergate Smart.
This would be fine, except for one thing. Pain’s mother:
…doubts whether her son was rushing to beat the curfew.
She said: “He was three minutes from home and had 18 minutes to get back when the accident happened.”
I would lay odds that she is right, and the coroner wrong. Not that it matters that much, since both Pain and Smith are still dead.
People are finding the blog on the search term “black box responsible for two teenagers dying”. Let’s get this absolutely straight: the driver was totally responsible for the accident. The black box almost certainly had nothing to do with it.
It is highly irresponsible of The Sun (and that coroner) to suggest that “black box” insurance is likely to cause such accidents. Responsibility for safety remains with the driver at all times, and if they could be trusted in the first place such technology would not be needed. The simple fact is that black box technology does not pick up every single misdemeanour. In this case, Smith may have been going far too fast for the bend which killed him, but he was not speeding as such – nor would the black box have identified his speed as excessive (not unless they’ve got Google Maps and a Cray X1 inside them now).
Far more likely is that Smith was simply doing what teenagers unfortunately do. He may even have been aware of the limits the black box would allow, and was pushing them (this is only conjecture and not a suggestion that it actually happened). We just don’t know.
One thing remains, however. The most common form of accident for new, young drivers is:
- male under 24
- more than one occupant
- at night
- on a country road
- on a bend
- no other car involved
For whatever reasons, Smith played this out to the letter.
I notice that some people are criticising black box insurance for “not always” being cheaper than regular insurance. These people are so annoying. They simply haven’t got a clue what they are talking about.
Black box insurance (BBI) is intended to reward good driving behaviour after it has been demonstrated. What the hell would be the point of rewarding it before? And the “reward” is premiums edging gradually closer to what normal drivers would pay – not a sudden and immediate drop to normal driver levels. Insurance is about risk, and not some stupid winner-takes-all game. The whole reason for BBI even having to exist is because statistically those people looking into getting it are generally already quoted high premiums because of the age group they’re in. Their age group has been proven statistically to be a huge risk compared to everyone else. Such a huge risk, in fact, that is has become essential for premiums to be hiked for the whole group (otherwise, all of us would have to pay a lot more for their insurance). BBI is a way by which those 17-24 year old group members who don’t bring the group down can be rewarded – which is exactly what the bleeding hearts/weak brains out there are always demanding when they say it is “unfair” to penalise all 17-24 years olds. New drivers are always a greater risk than experienced ones, so they will always have higher premiums one way or the other. It’s always been like that.
Even with normal insurance there are – rightly or wrongly – massive differences in quotes both between companies, and between individual quotes for what would appear to be similar people living in similar environments. BBI is just another insurance policy, and typical quotes for it will be higher than some and lower than other insurance quotes – be it the regular kind, or a competitor’s version of BBI.
Out of many hundreds of pupils, I have never managed to pick up any sort of pattern to the quotes they get from insurers. One 17-year old male managed to get insurance on an old Fiesta for £795, whilst at the same time several girls were quoted over £2,000 for new Clios and Meganes. One 21-year old living in a rough area with only on-road parking recently got insured on a Ka for under £2,000, whereas others having secure parking available were getting quotes in excess of £3,000. And some receive impossible quotes of more than £8,000 on bog-standard cars. Insurers are a law unto themselves.
As long as there can be such a vast difference between the amounts quoted by insurers to a single driver, people will shop around for the cheapest – and for the vast majority of “responsible” parents (and that even includes those who take part in stupid surveys) that means no BBI for little Jonny or Katie if a regular insurance quote is cheaper.All that matters is money – the crocodile tears can come later if Jonny or Katie is involved in a crash.
As long as BBI remains non-compulsory in 17-24 year olds, those “responsible” parents will continue to contribute directly to the fatalities resulting from their little angels’ immature behaviour on the roads.
second time that same company had been found in breach in six months – the first was when they had deliberately used the old Directgov livery on their site to make themselves look exactly like the then official DSA booking site.
It was that phone line scam that Ashraf was fined for by the premium rate phone line regulator PhonepayPlus. Several of those who complained also stated that they thought they were phoning the DSA. As well as the £85,000 fine, Ashraf has been ordered to refund all the complainants in full within 28 days.
A 
been fully explained, the recovery vehicle sent out was an RAC one. The RAC is The AA’s main competitor.