Hi All,

I was unlucky enough to get my first points for speeding, now luckily because I've been on the roads for a very long time and my no claims is bonus is very high.

I had to contact my insurance to advise that I had been done for speeding and that my license was now endorsed.

I could hear the hands of the insurance person rubbing his hands, but effectively my premium has gone up by £50. so not a huge amount.

the question or view is why on earth do insurance have this power of penalising you like this? surely its unfair to do that.

I have a few friends and colleagues who are from the continent and all of them said that points have no bearing on your insurance premiums. what is the catalyst is obviously if you have an accident or cause an accident.

what give the right to insurance companies in England to rob us blind just because you have been given points, why is it a fairer way of attributing risk?

if you are 17/18 and you get your first points, then I agree that its shows risk, but if you loyal customer who's been giving you business for the past 11 straight years.. feels wrong to me that they still blatantly, apply such a draconian approach.

you haven't been penalised for the points,

you have been penalised for the laws of physics that says the kinetic energy of a moving object increases as a square of the increase in velocity.

In short people who speed do a lot more damage when they crash.

You say this was because you were unlucky.

That suggests that statistics on the number of speeding events you have committed have led to a very small number of prosecutions hence the idea that somehow being caught was an unlikely event.

Well, insurance companies use statistics and very big computers to crunch the numbers so they know that for a certain number of idiots speeding without being caught a percentage of them will crash into something or someone causing them a loss.

They then weight the premium to reflect the odds of them having to pay out.

Most people who get done for speeding learn a lesson and that is what the punishments are designed to do,

adjust behaviour rather than punish just for the sake of it.

Some recidivists never learn though so take a step back and consider what you need to do in the light of all of this.

laws of physics and kinetics, I'm impressed.

surely, as you say, if insurance crunch the numbers they should be aware that if I was careless character then I wouldn't have waited this long to collect my very first penalty,

what I find that lacks cohesion is that seems in the continent they don't follow the same standards

- surely with insurance companies being global as they are..

I wonder why the UK has a less than orthodox approach to insurance premiums.

in light of all of this, to paraphrase

- I don't think its fit for purpose.

I'm lucky enough that I my premium is low

- but for some others they could be put in some hardship.

In Sweden they are fairly relaxed about using phones whilst driving maybe we should follow this as well

The hardship issue is what is used to try and combat peoples behavior behind the wheel, there is no doubt that speeding is dangerous.

I am sure that when people have been caught speeding that wasn't the only time they exceeded the speed limit, that may be the only time they got caught.

So crunching the numbers wont work on this.

Dont speed then. That's the answer.

Of course insurance premiums go up if your licence is endorsed.

Your a greater risk

what a ridiculous reply

- hardly worth it

- it seems that only in the UK this is a factor.

my point was the 2 weights and two measures.

soon we will groan on how insurance companies will raise the premiums because we are no longer part of the EU..

In Sweden you get fined a proportion of your income for every kph over the limit your go.

One chap got a fine of a quarter of a million quid for going about 10 kph too fast.

Fines are supposed to be deterrents

so Spain used to use different methods of deterring speeding motorists,

they used to take you go and look at the mangled bodies in accidents to try and make the errant driver actually see the consequences.

The requirement of insurance differs from country to country as well,

in Germany you insure the car and anyone can drive it,

here we insure the car and the driver and people get charges twice if they have 2 cars despite the fact they can only drive one at a time.

The insurance companies have some odd algorithms for calculating insurance, that is why they ask about what you do for a living.

they also whack up the premiums of anyone who gets shunted from behind as it is statistically more likey they will be involved in an accident that is their fault within the next year than someone who hasnt been hit by someone else. Reason is driving style.

You might think it unfair but the figures support it.

same with drunk driver, speeders etc.

you might only get caught once but look at the stats for those done for DUI more than once, people who have more than 6 points etc.

We have a damned sight more claims in this country per head of population as well, and the value of a second hand car is lower here than anywhere else so more write offs and bigger bills.

We also have more cars on our roads than anyone else per head of population and per mile of road

In Sweden they are fairly relaxed about using phones whilst driving maybe we should follow this as well

 

The hardship issue is what is used to try and combat peoples behavior behind the wheel, there is no doubt that speeding is dangerous.

 

I am sure that when people have been caught speeding that wasn't the only time they exceeded the speed limit, that may be the only time they got caught.

 

So crunching the numbers wont work on this.

I don't know where people are looking to find information or how they are forming their views

- but I looked for some official material on these premiums issue, since I had some free time.

Unfortunately for the insurance industry,

the Office of Fair Trading has looked into reasons of high insurance premiums,

discovering that there may be more than a few discrepancies between how much insurers claim it costs to actually insure a driver and all the potential variables including the reasoning offered while a driver has points or not.

In fact,

thanks to many complaints made to the OFT about possible price gouging occurring in the insurance industry,

it recently decided to refer the entire industry to the Competition Commission.

The Commission is now running its own,

independent investigation into how much it really does cost to insure a driver and how much insurers are charging customers.

If there is indeed evidence of price gouging,

and I hope they find it for ONCE it could spell very bad news for car insurance companies,

as they could face consequences;

it could lead to some relief for all the nation’s drivers,

considering how the system unfairly penalises

Also calculations or not,

the system is not set up in a fair manner.

all its designed for is to use variables that disproportionately in favour of the insurance company and brings no benefit to us drivers.