The utter insanity of insuring a car in London

rypt said:
How is he high risk, compared to driving it around the country-side?

You are more likely to stack it in the country side when hooning, than in London driving in traffic
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Where have you pulled that from? Insurance companies work on assessing and calculating risk, what makes you a greater authority on it?

More claims form your risk profile = higher premiums.

Its not a scam because if it didn't cost a lot to insure against that risk, a company could undercut all the others by a few hundred quid and make a killing. Young men it hot hatches in big cities cost a lot of money, that's the fact that a high premium tells you. Just like my loltasticly low premium tells you that a 25 year old driving an accord around Devon costs very little.
 
Janesy B said:
I thought I was bad, I can insure a VTS fully comp with a £500 excess for £1100 :p



I really don't think someone with 3 years NCB, well in their twenties in a 100BHP shopping trolley is particularly high risk, well not £2200 worth of risk.
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Try the quote as an 18 year old with no ncb :)
 
Janesy B said:
I don't think you've ever driven in London have you?
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I have and do, go down to Cricklewood and Golders Green / North Finchley every couple of weeks, and into central on Sundays time to time for the shops

As I said before, while the lane discipline may not be the best (due to the confusing junctions at times), the closest I've come to having an accident was with a taxi driven by some South Asian moron. In fact, the only people who drive like retards in London ARE the taxi drivers often.
London roads and traffic are too congested (with too many speed cameras) for you to have a proper accident.


iaind said:
Young men it hot hatches in big cities cost a lot of money, that's the fact that a high premium tells you.
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Again that's BS, young men in hot hatches are more likely to get it epicly wrong and crash in the country side, than crash in the stop-and-go London traffic. Women and old people (and taxi drivers) are the ones most likely to have a bump in slow traffic.
 
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iaind said:
How about lots of little accidents, scrapes, thefts, personal injury claims..........
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Small "scrapes" is a woman's thing really, in fact if you do it country wide women are more likely to be in an accident then men, it is just they have minor ones while men have bigger ones (hence the difference in insurance premiums).
Which also means that since a major accident is less likely in London due to the slow traffic, men are less likely to have that major accident.

As for personal injury, I do not believe you can get severe injuries from a minor scrape at 30mph

And as for thefts, outside of Brixton, Croydon and Haringey (and a few of the South Asian dominated areas) I doubt you are at any more risk of car theft then where I am (next door to a chav estate)
 
Living in London added 50% to my premium compared to being in a Surrey suburb. Fortunately I'm old enough where the absolute value of the increase isn't horrendous.

rypt said:
London roads and traffic are too congested (with too many speed cameras) for you to have a proper accident.
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rypt said:
Small "scrapes" is a woman's thing really, in fact if you do it country wide women are more likely to be in an accident then men

Which also means that since a major accident is less likely in London due to the slow traffic, men are less likely to have that major accident.

As for personal injury, I do not believe you can get severe injuries from a minor scrape at 30mph

And as for thefts, outside of Brixton, Croydon and Haringey (and a few of the South Asian dominated areas) I doubt you are at any more risk of car theft then where I am (next door to a chav estate)
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With respect, you are talking out of your cake hole (I'm also concerned by the faint overtones of sexism and racism in the post, but we'll leave that for the moment). Go and do a bit of a loop round Marble Arch, Park Lane and Hyde Park Corner a few times and see how many hair raising moments you have.

As for car crime, well if they were the only bad areas of London then it would be a far safer place, but unfortunately you've missed a load of places.

There are other factors too beacue of the congestion. Off street parking is at a minimum and cars on the street get damaged. Hundreds of scooters and bikes have accidents with cars. People tend to go through red lights more often because of frustration etc. etc. Heck just on my corner I've seen three police cars and two fire engines have accidents in the last six months (one guy being very seriously injured) and these are highly trained drivers. The insurers also have to pick up the bill for damaged property. I can't tell you how many railings and walls I've seen rebuilt numerous times.

I think someone earlier got it spot on when they said far higher frequency of smaller accidents. The overall cost to insurers is considerably higher in totality than elsewhere.
 
There is quite a simple solution to insuring a car in London.

It involves walking, a bike, bus or train.
 
Living in london doubled my car insurance premiums.

Rypt - whilst in 'low speed' london, i crashed into one person and had 4 people crash into me ( 2 write-offs), there is so much traffic that a momentary lapse in concentration is much much more likely to end in a problem because there is pretty much guaranteed to be something to hit. As for low speed, people break the speed limits much more regularly in London, particularly on certain roads.
 
It does vary. In SW11:

Male, 23, 3 NCB, Fault claim in Nov 2008, SP50 in Oct 2005. To insure a 2010 Audi S3 Sportback, it cost around £1,600 + £750 excess.

Bargain.
 
rypt - why dont you set up your own insurance company specialising in young blokes in hot hatches in london? You could make a killing - if you're convinced that the cost of claims is so low then you could make a fortune!

Alternatively, back up your conjecture with actual statistics or facts? Insurance doesnt work on opinion, simple as
 
London or any other urban area seems to be an insurance black hole.

For example, two quick quotes done on Confused (I know, I know, CBA to sit on the phone for the sake of interenets research)...

Renaultsport Clio 172, 23yo Male, 3 years NCB and experience with 0 claims and a clean licence:

HA8: £2200 + £1250 excess
PO21: £800 + 500 excess

So yes, yoofs in fast cars are a risk, but being in an Urban area loads it up a hell of a lot more.
 
BigT said:
Go and do a bit of a loop round Marble Arch, Park Lane and Hyde Park Corner a few times and see how many hair raising moments you have.
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Been there, done that, didn't see any accidents ... as for hair raising moments, sure there are a few, but then again you see plenty outside of London too

TomO said:
Rypt - whilst in 'low speed' london, i crashed into one person and had 4 people crash into me ( 2 write-offs), there is so much traffic that a momentary lapse in concentration is much much more likely to end in a problem because there is pretty much guaranteed to be something to hit. As for low speed, people break the speed limits much more regularly in London, particularly on certain roads.
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As a kid I used to live in London (NW1), and in all that time my dad only had 2 accidents. 1 was a dent in his drivers door, the other was a police car crashing into his car while giving chase to some baddies.
In both cases he did not have to pay anything out as he was not the party at fault (how could he be, the car was parked both times).
I don't know where you managed to get 4 idiots to crash into you, but from driving into London (granted on weekends usually), and from having lived there until about 13 years ago, I can't say that the place is more accident prone

It doesn't matter about breaking the speedlimit, you are not going to get unstuck doing 40 in a 30 in London in a hot hatch, but if you go hooning in the countryside you are still more likely to have a major accident due to lack of skill / bad judgement
 
rypt said:
doesn't matter about breaking the speedlimit, you are not going to get unstuck doing 40 in a 30 in London in a hot hatch, but if you go hooning in the countryside you are still more likely to have a major accident due to lack of skill / bad judgement
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You seem to be looking at the situation from one side only, i.e someone driving the car and crashing it and even the way you look at that is most odd, all your posts seem very naive imho.
 
rypt said:
As a kid I used to live in London (NW1), and in all that time my dad only had 2 accidents. 1 was a dent in his drivers door, the other was a police car crashing into his car while giving chase to some baddies.
In both cases he did not have to pay anything out as he was not the party at fault (how could he be, the car was parked both times).
I don't know where you managed to get 4 idiots to crash into you, but from driving into London (granted on weekends usually), and from having lived there until about 13 years ago, I can't say that the place is more accident prone

It doesn't matter about breaking the speedlimit, you are not going to get unstuck doing 40 in a 30 in London in a hot hatch, but if you go hooning in the countryside you are still more likely to have a major accident due to lack of skill / bad judgement
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Things have changed in 13 years, it is worse now in my opinion.

I dont care how careful you are, in central London some idiot will hit you, even if its a push bike, someone will manage it at some stage.
 
But insurance companies still punish the innocent though, where's the sense and fairness in that?
I've consistently showed Direct Line that i'm a safer bet driver than some of their 'clients' as i've not made a claim in over 6 years, so they've made good money out of me. Yet they push my premiums up each year, admittedly not by much, but £30 (10%) for me not hassling them once is obviously a way for them to levy their losses caused by others... onto others.
My 2 step-sons were 16 in April, their mopeds cost £480 to insure (TPFT) with a £520 excess. Lol, excess was more than the premium.....didn't think that actually happened!
 
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