A reader pointed me towards this story on WalletPop concerning a survey done by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.
The story identifies so-called blackspots, where “almost” a third of drivers are driving without insurance. Uninsured drivers add an average of £30 to everyone’s annual motor insurance premiums.
I am totally against uninsured driving, but I can’t respond to the drama they seem to be creating around these blackspots. Is it any better if you’re maimed by an uninsured driver from, say, Richmond or South Kensington instead of Halifax, Birmingham, or Manchester? I don’t think so.
I remember one of those TV police shows where one of the traffic cops said that on the normal roads, you might find that 1 in every 10 routine stops involves an uninsured driver (this was in South Yorkshire), but there was a particular (very rough) housing estate in Sheffield where you could be sure that every stopped car would be uninsured.
And Sheffield doesn’t even feature on the list in this article.
It is argued that by raising the limit to 80mph, drivers will have more respect for the rules. You may as well argue that it will also end the recession and world hunger if you’re going to make silly claims up like that.
A DfT spokesman said:
We need to make sure that we are looking at the right criteria…
This means looking at the economic benefits of shorter journey times as well as considering other implications such as road safety and carbon emissions.
Any proposal to change national speed limits would be subject to full public consultation.
At least someone is still in touch with reality (a little bit, anyway).
Going faster will only lead to shorter journey times if there is no other traffic around. A typical journey on a typical UK motorway anywhere between 7am and 9pm is actually made longer by people already doing 80mph (and more). I explained this in the earlier article:
What happens is that even if you’re doing 70mph, a huge number of people will be doing 80, 90, even 100mph if they can in the outside lane(s). Conversely, a huge number of other people will be doing 60 or even 50mph in the inside or middle lanes.
…it means that inevitably someone going faster is going to have to slow down. This cascades down the whole line, and eventually – after all the lane changing to get round it has run out of steam – someone has to stop. Then, this too cascades down the line, and everyone else has to stop, and the further back they are, the longer the wait to get going again.
I call it the caterpillar effect.
Raising the limit might have some benefits, but shorter journey times are not one of them. And with the overall ability of many drivers, safety isn’t either.
An article on MyFinances.co.uk lists 15 ways in which you can cut your car insurance:
buy a car that’s cheaper to insure
switch insurers
secure your car
increase voluntary excess
get insured as a named driver
pay upfront
pay with a 0% credit card
watch out for good deals
tell your insurer if your circumstances change
reduce your mileage
driver more safely
use a ‘telematics’-based insurer
take advanced driving lessons
be honest
don’t necessarily get the cheapest policy
I have to say that the list is a bit of a damp squib, really. Except for the parts which are dangerously wrong and misleading (see the one I’ve highlighted in red).
MyFinances claims that the only problem with being a named driver is that:
…it is illegal to tell an insurer your parent is the main driver on your own car.
What they don’t explain is that it is also illegal to do it on ANY car if you are the main driver (owner or not), and with some insurers (Tesco, for example, so hardly the obscure ones) it will also be considered illegal if you are merely a regular user (which I wrote about in this article).
The one about paying upfront is also a red herring. For most people, it’s how much they have to pay right now that’s the problem. If they are quoted £2k, paying £184 a month (including a 10.6% premium for the privilege) is rather more manageable than paying £2k in one go – especially if they don’t have £2k in their pockets.
And this obviously has knock-on implications for the advice about using a 0% credit card. At best, it will only work for 1 year while the 0% promotion is running – plus, you need to be able to get a credit card in the first place, and not get sucked into the downward credit spiral that comes with the things.
Reducing your mileage? Right. And while we’re at it, let’s just not get a car at all and save the whole lot.
I’m sorry, but most of the advice is just unrealistic.
According to the Daily Star – in one of it’s more lucid (and less pornographic) moments – “the soaring cost of car insurance” is to be probed by a government watchdog.
Apparently, everyone is paying up to 40% more per year for insurance.
It cites young drivers being quoted a “whopping” £2,300 on a Vauxhall Corsa (typical chavmobile) worth £1,450, and how they’d “celebrate” if prices were cut.
A simple bit of arithmetic shows that if we weren’t all paying that extra 40%, young drivers would be having quotes of £1,650 instead. So that must be “minuscule” then, if we stick with the Star’s favoured style.
The Star appears to ignore the Co-op’s spokesman:
The main reason for [high insurance] is the large number of accidents caused by young drivers.
I’ll tell you what’s behind the price hikes affecting everyone else, though: the recession.
Every company out there is trying to maintain it’s profitability in the face as higher costs and falling sales. For companies whose income depends purely on people paying for a service, it’s fairly obvious how you maintain the balance.
This story in Exchange & Mart (and covered elsewhere) reveals that nearly half of British motorists are driving on illegal tyres – risking fines and penalty points, as well as lives.
The specification for tyres is that they should have a minimum of 1.6mm of tread across the middle three-quarters of the tyre’s width, and all around the edges, plus they should have no cuts, bulges, or other damage to the sidewalls.
Anyone caught driving on illegal tyres will get at least 3 points on their licence – but if all four are defective then it is a straight ban. And you can be fined up to £2,500 per defective tyre.
Measuring them is simple. You use a small tool like the one shown here, and available for a few pounds from Halfords or any motorists’ parts store.
However, it isn’t just ignorance that leads to people driving on illegal tyres. The recession has just added to the problem of people who can’t afford to drive having jalopies that are simply not roadworthy. Driving is seen as a right and not a privilege.
I notice on forums where young drivers hang out that the main topics are how to get cheap insurance, how to buy a cheap car, and how to fix things like broken exhausts and cracked windscreens – without having to pay someone to do it.
A while back – just over a year ago, in fact – there was a story involving the DSA having had to change the wording on its website. It had previously claimed that Pass Plus reduced someone’s chances of having an accident, but statistics could not confirm this claim and it had to reword accordingly.
Well, this story in the North West Evening Mail flies right in the face of that.
It seems that government spending cuts had threatened the region’s Pass Plus + scheme with the impending withdrawal of the National Road Safety Grant. But Cumbria County Council has stepped in and is funding the scheme itself, which means each young driver gets £100-worth of free tuition.
That’s not the thing that caught my attention, though. What did that was this comment in the article:
Statistics have shown a sharp fall in accidents in Cumbria since Pass Plus+ was rolled out in the county in 2007.
That’s a very clear statement, isn’t it?
As I’ve said before, Pass Plus is only as good as the instructor delivering it. If it is a “crap course”, the reason for that is therefore obvious.
An interesting article on MoneyExpert.com reveals that 16% of women have had a crash or near miss as a result of applying make-up on the move!
It’s worth a reminder of the usual men vs. women argument, where women claim that they have fewer accidents than men. As I’ve pointed out many times, what with the number of men who drive compared to women, where they drive, how much they drive, why they drive, and so on, the situation is far too complex to just lock on to the “more accidents” figure. And this article seems to prove that.
Diamond – and insurance company which specialises in insuring women drivers – 25% of women put on make up whilst driving, and of those 1 in 10 take their hands off the wheel completely in order to do it!
This in itself is shocking, but the article goes on to say that women treat their cars as second homes and eat breakfast, brush their hair, and read the newspaper whilst driving.
It goes on with more frightening statistics, saying that 47% admitted to checking text messages, a third brushed their hair, a third ate breakfast, and a third drink hot drinks.
It gets even worse, with 18% admitting checking emails and 1 in 10 admitting to reading the newspaper.
The article is a little unclear when it goes on to say that 60% of women apply make up whilst driving (contradicting the 25% at the beginning), but it says that 90% of those who do it agree that it is dangerous.
Two thirds of females have applied make-up whilst having passengers on board, and a third have done it with children.
Diamond’s managing director says:
It’s shocking that quite so many women admit to doing these tasks while driving, We all have busy lives but applying your make-up, or checking emails, when you’re driving is dangerous as it means your full attention is not on the road ahead.
I wonder if this is preparation for the impending insurance hikes for women? Diamond has apparently marketed itself on lower premiums for women in the past, of course.
The results just confirm that women drivers are dangerous in their own way, and it is quite right they should be paying insurance premiums that go along with it.
I see it many times daily. The first thing many women do when they stop at traffic lights is lean over and play with their hair. And they often have the interior mirror adjusted so you can see their cleavage – which means they have it adjusted so they can look at themselves while they are driving!
I saw this story on the BBC. Apparently, learners in Jersey could end up having to pass their theory test before being allowed to take driving lessons on the road.
At the moment, the system in Jersey corresponds to the one we have on the UK mainland, but the proposed change would mean that they would have to have a theory test certificate in order to even apply for their provisional driving licence.
If the plans go ahead, teenagers would be able to sit the theory test up to a year before their 17th birthday, so they would still be able to start learning from their 17th.
One of the Parish Constables said that people should know their theory before getting behind the wheel of a car.
I agree – but if someone takes the test when they are 16, it might be a year before they go anywhere near a car, so their knowledge will not be current, nor will it be fresh. Some might sit it when they’re 16, then not take lessons for up to three years.
Some people are clever, and some people just think they are. Dr Tennore Ramesh appears to be a member of the latter category.
He was picked up doing 41mph in a 30mph zone by one of those mobile speed traps in Sheffield. He denied the charge, and tried to use Google Earth distances to prove that he wasn’t breaking the limit.
I’m not quite sure what he was thinking, since in order to identify someone’s speed you need to be able to measure distances very accurately, and Google Earth images consist of stitched frames. So although they are fine for measuring distances of many miles, where a mile or so either way isn’t significant, when it comes to the definition needed to prove speed to this level… well, it’s clutching at straws right from the start.
At best, you could perhaps argue the toss on an average speed over a long distance – but a precise speed at a specific point? I don’t think so.
But an expert for the prosecution proved that Google Earth distances are inaccurate.
More telling, Ramesh already had 3 points on his licence for… you guessed it: speeding. And he had held his UK licence for less than two years, which means that if he got 6 points then he would be banned and forced to take his test again.
When the prosecution evidence became known, Ramesh had to change his not guilty plea to guilty on the morning of the trial. He therefore urged the court to ban him outright so that he didn’t get the extra 3 points in the belief it would save him from the need to retake his test.
Fortunately, we have another judge (that makes two by my reckoning) who still maintains links with reality. Naomi Redhouse refused to impose a ban on its own just because it would be to his advantage. She slapped him with 3 points and left the decision over his licence with the DVLA.
Ramesh was ordered to pay nearly £4,000 costs and was fined nearly £400. Plus – if the DVLA does the right thing – he’ll end up paying a few hundred more for lessons and tests.
An email alert from the DSA has just arrived and it says that later this month, new learning materials will be available for those taking the theory test from January 2012.
This was originally announced in 2010 – it was mentioned in the December 2010 issue of Despatch, and first announced in late October 2010. A lot of people – including instructors – seem not to be aware of it even in late 2011.
In a nutshell, the DSA will no longer be publishing the question bank in an effort to stop people just learning the answers by rote. In a way, it is a throwback to when I did my test many years ago, where you learnt the Highway Code and applied it. Sadly, in just the same way that general secondary education has gone down the route of trying to make it easier for people to pass exams by making the test easier rather than improving the educational system (and then boasting about how good everyone is every Summer, after record A*** (or however many stars they use) grades), so the driving test went the same way over the last 30 years or so.
There are already bad noises coming from the usual agitators, but it is an excellent idea by the DSA.
These new learning materials – books, CDs, and DVDs – will contain example questions, but not the actual ones used on test.
