Friday, March 25, 2011
Young people faced with difficult choices
Can it really have come to this? Must it be that for some young drivers the choice is between paying for car insurance cover or putting a deposit down on a house?
Well, I for one hope that young people aren’t faced with this dilemma. Although the obvious choice would be to own a house, you still need to be able to have some freedom of movement. What’s the point in owning a house if you’re stuck in it all day and can’t actually move anywhere?
You might think I’m being extreme, but I’m not – for some young drivers, the exorbitant cost of motor insurance cover means that they are actually faced with this dilemma.
Said one young driver who was quoted £24,000 to insure his 12-year-old Volvo, “It’s enough for a deposit on a nice house.”
And this wasn’t some young boy racer. This was a responsible young man who had taken the Pass Plus advanced driver certificate.
And, astonishingly, in the same week another young driver was actually quoted a full £12,000 more for a policy for his modest grey Vauxhall Corsa.
Perhaps these two hadn’t heard of telematics car insurance, which saves you money by rewarding you for safe driving, but I’ve got a feeling that if they had we probably never would have read any news stories of their outrageously expensive car insurance quotes.
Telematics: it doesn’t make you choose between being a driver and a mortgage holder. But let’s face it, with house prices as they are today, we’re not likely to be able to afford a house for a while yet.
I wonder if our parents’ generation, many of whom bought houses in their early twenties, has any idea of just how lucky they’ve been.
Image by cheetleys via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car insurance, telematics, young driver
Bee in your bonnet about maintenance?
Many young motorists may be shocked to hear that a large number of road users are clueless when it comes to car maintenance – seven out of eight are unable to check tyre pressure, top-up water and oil or change head-light bulbs themselves.
An even more shocking statistic, perhaps, is that around 4 million UK drivers don’t even know how to open their car’s bonnet.
The research was undertaken by Castrol, an oil company, and findings suggest that modern motorists are much more concerned with how their car looks on the outside than how it works on the inside.
Apparently, the newest generation of road user knows more about in-car gadgets, like GPS, than the workings of their vehicle.
Some may find it a little worrying that these motorists are on the roads alongside them – some might recognise these characteristics as their own.
If you can count yourself amongst the un-mechanically minded masses, then maybe it’s time to have some maintenance lessons.
A motoring expert has said, “Those who ignore the basics, or don't even bother to get their car serviced, should realise that this is a false economy – both with their time and money.
“A new engine can be an expensive proposition but basic and easy maintenance tasks can ensure this does not happen.”
Image by Accretion Disc via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car maintenance, young motorists
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Google’s driverless car
It has been an exciting week in the motor industry, with Google releasing new footage of road tests of its driverless car.
The adapted Toyota Prius was seen screeching and tearing its way round a track in San Francisco.
Warning: This video contains mild bad language.
It was a high-speed test. Round every inch of the track the vehicle looked like it had the Stig behind the wheel, but it didn’t, just a lot of technology and one very trusting human passenger.
Google has high hopes for the driverless technology. It believes that it could halve the 1.2 million road fatalities that occur on the world’s roads each year. And it’s already travelled 140,000 miles in real, unsimulated traffic – impressive.
But what would driverless technology mean for us? Sure, it would be nice to be chauffeured at our convenience, but would we still need to take driving tests and would we still need to obtain young driver insurance before we took to the roads.
My greatest fear is Wall-E style idleness: us humans become less and less capable as machines take over the most basic tasks until, ultimately, we’re left with no competence at all.
Sure, we might be behind the wheel to take over in the event that the technology malfunctions, but what would we actually be able to do if we’ve little to no experience of driving?
Labels: driverless technology, motor industry, young driver insurance
Monday, March 14, 2011
Tanks for the new car, Dad!
“Attention all young driver insurance holders – car parking space too small – over.”
“Roger that, Hoot – giving up and finding wider space – over.”
If you have trouble squeezing into car parking spaces with the vehicle you have now, then buying some of the hardware the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is offering at the moment might not be wise.
Due to the budget cuts, the MoD is selling off many of its military vehicles – including around 600 tanks, some sturdy camo-adorned Land Rovers, and an amphibious 6x6 Supacat.
Witham Specialist Vehicles is the company in charge of selling and auctioning off these machines to the general public, and you’d be surprised how cheaply some of them are priced.
There are some provisos though, as the Witham sales director explained, “We don’t sell to just anybody. Anything that is armoured or militarised is subject to the strictest export licences.”
The other small catch of course is the probable lack of parking spaces wide enough to fit your new purchase into – plus the overwhelming urge to park on top of other vehicles when in a rush.
Image by ahisgett via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: young driver insurance
Friday, March 11, 2011
Don’t let your cheap policy go up in smoke
It’s for a reason that even before there was scientific consensus on the harmfulness of tobacco, packs of cigarettes were often referred to as “coughin’ nails”.
And over the mid to late decades of the last century our parents and grandparents grew up with slogans such as Doctors Prefer Camel, Guard Against Throat Scratch or As Your Dentist I Would Recommend Viceroys and Just What the Doctor Ordered… the list could go on.
In fact, with hindsight it’s surprising that any of us have any parents or grandparents left at all.
Nowadays, fortunately, smoking is on the decline and although no-one is yet questioning an adult individual’s right to smoke, there is no longer any advertising, and health warnings are clear. Indeed, soon all tobacco companies could be forced to sell their products in plain and unglamorous packaging.
There are plenty of good reasons not to smoke. Not smoking is better for your health and your wallet and, although often overlooked, will help keep down the cost of any health or life insurance policy.
But what about car insurance? Do young drivers risk missing out on cheap quotes for policies if they smoke behind the wheel?
Well, before answering this question I should first say that it is illegal for a person to smoke in a car that is being used for public transport or the purposes of work.
It is also an offence for private drivers in Scotland, where transgressors are served a £60 fine.
And, although it is not an offence in the rest of the UK, smoking and driving can be classed as a “distraction” and may come with the loss of up to nine penalty points and, potentially a £2,500 fine and a driving ban.
In short, if you’re a smoker and want to protect your entitlement to cheap car insurance, it’s best not to light up while behind the wheel.
Image © JoelnSouthernCA via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Friday, March 4, 2011
Will Jamie educate young drivers?
I don’t know how many of you have been following Jamie’s Dream School, but if you haven’t you’re certainly missing out on some compelling viewing.
As young drivers it’s likely that, like me, you’re not long out of school so many of the scenes and much of the classroom banter will seem eerily familiar.
Like Jamie Oliver himself, my reaction at seeing classrooms full of unruly, distracted and persecuted-feeling teenagers was one of horrified self-revelation. Was I really like that – was I that bad, was I worse? Did I have that little empathy and respect for my teachers? Have I grown up so much in only five years?
It seems to matter little to the 20 students in Jamie’s dream school that their teachers are celebrities. They’re simply not as impressed by the assembled thespians, knights, lords, doctors and documentary presenters as I imagine they would have been at being taught acting by someone from the cast of Hollyoaks?And poor David Starkey! The elevated, slightly fusty historian is so bewildered by the motley crew of secondary school dropouts that he gets in front of the class and instantly assumes the template of the teacher at school most likely to suffer a mid-lesson cardiac arrest.
“You’re here because you failed!” he says before going on to call a student fat, all without any provocation.
Perhaps something is missing from the programme and I’ll be interested to see if there’s any mention of this missing element over the coming episodes. What about some road safety education?
With young driver car insurance premiums being far too costly for many and more young people dying in road accidents than from any other cause, road safety education definitely deserves a place on Jamie’s curriculum.
And perhaps Starkey could learn a trick or two from Hoot! where we reward people for doing the right thing. It’s called using the carrot, not the stick and, you know what, it works.
Image © treehouse1977 via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence