With the legal driving age set at 17 The Association of British Insurers declared that every year 50,000 17-year-olds pass their driving test with less than six months’ experience on the road. The result of which has  meant that these youngsters, teenage boys in particular, are thought to cause more accidents and deaths on the road than any other age group. This has led to the cost of a young person insuring their car reach astronomical proportions.

With proposals suggesting the minimum age to learn to drive increase to 18 and experience on the road increase to at least one year before achieving a license, will this have an effect on the cost of insurance? Research shows that every day in Britain there are four fatalities or serious injuries as a result of accidents caused by young people, and it is estimated that the country’s 18-year-olds  alone cause 50 collisions a day. Even with new young drivers, the effect and damage caused by their peers has meant newer generations are set to the price.

The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) and the Department for Transport (DfT) recently put out a consultation paper seeking views on wide-ranging changes to driver education and testing, in order to gain an idea on how to improve safety measures, while the European Commission is now seeking to replace instructing drivers with coaching them. This will help to address the emotional issues of driving and risk-taking tendencies prevalent in young-men in particular, alongside the practical aspects usually learnt during lessons.

The general consensus that has since developed during Safex 08, was that basic car control could easily be taught and picked up within a matter of months, but students repeatedly failed to apply this knowledge whilst on the road, making 18-25 year olds nearly 50% more likely to cause or be involved in an accident then any other age group. The result of which can be seen in the thousands of pounds each new driver has to invest in insurance. These new safety measures have been mainly introduced to help young male drivers who suffer from a combination of attributes deemed to be deadly on the road, such as over-confidence, poor observation and competitiveness which has led to a large number of male fatalities every year.  These suggested forms of coaching are intended to address this inexperience and help young drivers to become more aware and responsible on the road.

As a result of this increase in safety measures the minimum legal driving age is expected to rise to 18 with a 12-month training period for new drivers. However, this does not mean that the cost facing young people to insure themselves will be any less. Third party cover still looks to remain attractive, as it is a cheap legal way to drive, and with what also appears to be a more expensive way to learn to drive third party cover is a far more practical way to insure your car at a young age. What this policy does not cover is any damage to the ‘third party’ or your car, making any accident, no matter how minor, become a slap in the face for your bank account.  

It seems that although these safety measures are indeed a great idea, particularly for other motorists on the road, they do not appear to address the cost of these measures nor whether they will actually be achievable. Insurance costs for these new drivers will no doubt increase regardless of these schemes, as will just learning to drive. Driving age is always incredibly biased against young drivers, what insurers don’t tend to acknowledge are their more positive attributes from fast-reaction times to simply having better eye-sight.

Older drivers are surely just as hazardous, they become lax in their approach to driving and when something becomes habit it is easy lose concentration. Surely these new measures should provide some financial benefits in terms of insurance; otherwise shouldn’t we turn our attention to the older drivers that can barely reach 50 on the motorway?