When I was a youngster, driving my first car, I was paying through the nose for insurance and I was told that there were all kinds of reasons for this. They said that young people were more likely to be involved in accidents so there was a loading for that. They said youngsters were more likely to speed and drive carelessly so that was taken into account as well. They told me that I shouldn’t worry though because it would get a lot better for me when I reached twenty-one years of age.
But when I hit twenty-one I was told that my situation would improve when I reached the age of twenty-five. On and on it went and now, as I approach sixty, I find that I am still suffering.
It would appear that I am being penalised for the sins of others. I have had a clean drivers licence for the last forty years, I have never had an accident or a claim and I don’t have any penalty points. I’m retired so I only clock up about ten thousand kilometres a year, I live in the countryside and my car is parked in a driveway every night. I would have thought that I would be a dream customer for any insurance company but it seems as if I have been diagnosed with the plague. Nobody wants to touch me.
For the last number of years, I have been paying about €300 for my insurance. It varied a bit from year to year but it was always in or around that price. Last year there was a significant jump when I was quoted a figure of €590. I thought that this was a bit excessive but the nice lady informed me that all the premiums had increased thanks to the Government levy.
When I suggested that I was going to shop around and try elsewhere there was a bit of a rethink and the price reduced to €460. I did check around but that was still the best I could come up with so I went with it albeit with a bit of a grievance.
This year, I discovered that the premium had risen to €620. I immediately went online and did some shopping around and I was quoted prices from €585 to €800 with the average being about €700. I contacted my current insurer and I asked the lady to clarify what I had done to upset them so much. She told me that basically they were spending a fortune on claims and every customer was going to be paying about €80 on their policy until the books were balanced. My premium had gone up by €160 so presumably I was chipping in for some other poor sod as well.
So if this is happening to the likes of me, then how are younger people going to manage especially if they have penalty points or an older car? There must be individuals out there who just can’t afford to put their car on the road. Motor insurance premiums have risen by almost 40% in the last year according to the Central Statistics Office and one third of drivers have seen their insurance rise by up to 50% and it is particularly impacting on younger drivers. Young men in their early 20s are being asked to pay anything between €6,000 and €14,000 a year.
In its defence, the industry has said higher claim payouts necessitated premium hikes. Michael Horan of Insurance Ireland said that while overall claims costs have been dropping, the premium incomes of companies have also been in decline. Insurers claim that they are losing money due to higher levels of road fatalities, increased accidents and more personal injury claims. Legal costs and massive awards made in the courts are adding to the costs.
So, it seems that everyone is blaming someone else for the high cost of insurance and these arguments prove that people can produce figures to support all sides. But the reality is that we’re paying more money for insurance and the figures in our bank statements will support that.
Uninsured drivers are also driving up the cost of motoring for the rest of us. The Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland has reported that there has been an 85 per cent increase in the number uninsured drivers over past five years so there could be as many as 150,000 uninsured drivers on our roads currently. The increase in insurance costs could certainly be a factor in this rise and while there is a legal obligation on every driver to be insured, it’s obvious that not everybody takes that obligation seriously.
Insurance is there to provide protection for us all in the event of an accident but despite the penalties applied to uninsured drivers, there are still many who think it is worth taking a chance on driving without it. Or maybe they feel they have no choice when they can’t afford the premium and public transport is not an option for them.
The insurance industry has been coming under pressure to provide a data base of all insured drivers to the gardaí who could then use hand held devices to check if a car was insured or not. It makes sense at this stage that insurance companies should be talking to each other and to the gardai to tackle this issue.
On a positive note, the Government is determined to drive down the cost of insurance. Just like they are going to fix the hospital crisis and the plight of the homeless. That worries me because by the time they resolve this, I might be able to afford to insure my car but I will probably be in a home for the bewildered struggling to remember my name.