Young drivers could slash £200 a year off insurance bills – but do you drive safely enough?
Young drivers who have standard policies have seen premiums rise by £284 in the year to February
YOUNG drivers could cut their car insurance by £200 - simply by having a "black box" installed on their car.
A black box is a device put into a car to monitor the motorist's driving habits, and if they drive safely, the insurer will slash the cost of cover - often by hundreds of pounds.
The technology measures various aspects of the driver’s behaviour, particularly length of journeys, type of roads driven on, the time of day/night journeys, and the smoothness of driving.
Motorists aged 17-20 who have already adopted telematics insurance pay an average £1,638 a year - £202 more than the cost of standard policies, according to MoneySuperMarket.com data.
Earlier this year, The Sun Online spoke to a young driver about how telematics insurance had caused the cost of her cover to fall by £640 a year.
In the first year of driving, Amy’s insurance premium for her Ford KA cost £1,200 with Insure the Box but this was dropped down to just £560 after 12 months.
A similar non-telematics policy for an 18-year-old female driver living in Herefordshire would cost around £1,365.
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Young drivers who have standard policies have seen their premiums rise by 17 per cent, equivalent to £284, in the year to February 2017.
And with the latest Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) rise coming into force next week, which will go from 10 per cent to 12 per cent, young drivers will see their insurance bill rise by a further £30 a year.
Kevin Pratt, consumer affairs expert at MoneySuperMarket, said: “Car insurance premiums are rising rapidly, and they’re set to get higher.
“Telematics offers a cheaper alternative to traditional policies if the driver can demonstrate he or she is a lower-risk proposition than the statistics for their demographic suggest."
How to cut your car insurance premiums
IF you have a standard policy, there are a few ways you can cut your bill.
- Shop around for the best deals. Simply rolling the policy over with the same insurer – what’s known as ‘auto-renewal’ – means drivers are almost certainly paying more than they need to. Use websites like MoneySuperMarket, Gocompare and Confused.com to compare deals
- Add an extra driver to your policy. It is illegal to claim someone is the main driver when they’re not, but adding a secondary driver can save you some money and is within the law
- Pay for your premium in full. If you can afford to stump up the cash outright, pay for your car insurance in annually rather than monthly as you could make big savings.
What is telematics insurance and how does it work?
Telematics technology works by putting a black box in a person's vehicle - or on the driver's phone - to monitor the style of a person's driving, for instance their speed, cornering, acceleration and breaking. The black boxes also store the location and time of drivers' journeys.
So while telematics has been proven to lower insurance costs, you'll need to be prepared to share more data with your insurer, about when, where and how you drive.
Insurers then use this information to assess the risk of the driver. The safest are rewarded with the biggest discount, while those who drive erratically could see their premiums rise.
Insurers decide how to reward customers who drive safely. Some will give lower premiums from the outset, while others give discounts for good driving.
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