Car Insurance -
Between Risky Driving and Rising Car Insurance Premium
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The revelation by uSwitch.com last month, after a basic driving test in which a record number of participants exposed the poor knowledge UK drivers have of essential Highway Code, must have left many of us in utter disbelief. My problem with regards to issues like this is that many people’s lives are put at risk as a result of the failure or nonchalance of a few others.
It’s a common knowledge that road accidents, which claim more than 4,000 people yearly, are a major cause of concern for leaders and people in the UK. While it is clear that reckless drivers put roads users, including themselves, at risk, the fundamental thing that needs questioning is whether there is possibility of mitigating the hazard and how this could be done.
Lest not forget the fact that, in spite of the worry over road accidents and accompanying fatalities, experts have claimed that there is about 5 per cent fall in the number of road accidents in recent years. Nonetheless, the ways in which these accidents occur and the reasons given for them are enough to make people lose sleep.
One very important reason, around which several other factors revolve, is the lack of basic understanding of Highway Code. This is clearly antithetical to the importance of the code and its relevance in promoting the safety of every road user.
About 7,300 of the accidents that occur each year are caused by overspeeding and 14 per cent of them are fatal. And more than 16,000 -18 per cent of which are fatal - happen due to reckless driving. In addition, the failure of motorists to obey such basic signs as ‘Give Way’ or ‘Stop’ leads to almost 5,500 accidents.
The test further showed that eight-in-ten drivers don’t know the right shape of a ‘Stop’ sign and that 58 per cent of drivers don’t even know what to do in case there is a failure on the part of traffic lights. Equally amazing is that 53 per cent of drivers don’t know what an amber traffic light symbolises.
Overall, the result of the test discovered just how much people treat the issue of their safety and of others with levity. Of the 2,500 participants, all of them experienced drivers as they claimed, it’s rather very disappointing that nearly half failed to score the required marks and eight per cent got almost every question wrong. With motorists like this, we need no further search to know exactly where the trouble lies.
A way forward on this issue is for drivers to consider the fact that our roads are as safe or as risky as we make them. It is our job to learn to drive safely by knowing all the rules by heart. This, of course, may require us taking more lessons, which we may consider a waste of time and money, but it’s worth the price in the end.
However, if we don’t buy the collective safety argument, we will definitely be forced to act as the cost of our car insurance premiums continue to rise with every claim we make following accidents. With insurers put at alert by the assertion by uSwitch.com that nearly £1 million worth of claims will be made every hour, drivers should expect premiums to keep rising in cost. Certainly insurers are in the business to make profit.
Finally, for drivers who fail to take warning the final point is where, in addition to hiked premiums, they are refused insurance because they have amassed too many points on their licence and insurers consider them too risky to do business with.
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