A single driving fine will cost you a fortune in rising premiums

by Cliff D'Arcy on 24 April 2012  |  18 comments
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Fines for minor motoring offences could send your car insurance premium shooting skywards for years!

The 'rules of the road', as laid down in the Highway Code and motoring legislation, are designed to protect drivers, passengers, cyclists, other road users and pedestrians. When we break them, we expect to be punished by the authorities.

But a new survey from The AA suggests that being fined for motoring offences is only the beginning. In some cases, the subsequent rise in your car insurance premiums can leave you nursing a bill four times as big as the original fine.

A quadruple whammy

The AA's latest research found that a motorist's first speeding offence can cost four times the typical £60 fine, thanks to higher insurance premiums for the next three years. Apologetic drivers who instead agree to take a speed-awareness course can keep their clean driving licences and reduce the total cost of their offences.

Leave your phone alone

Drivers who deny using their phones while driving can easily be caught out, as police can and do check phone records if they suspect a driver of using a handheld phone at the time of an accident.

To demonstrate how harshly insurers treat this offence, the AA produced the following table of premiums before and after a driver* was given a CU80 penalty, which attracts at least a £60 fine and three points on your licence.

* Based on a 40-year-old man driving a Ford Mondeo, using eight insurers on the AA's panel.

As you can see, four refused cover, while the other four pushed up their renewal premiums by between 14% and 32%, with the average premium increase being 18%.

Only one or two police forces offer mobile-phone awareness courses, so there's little chance you'll escape a CU80 penalty if you're caught 'dialling and driving'. That's a pretty hefty price to pay for taking or making a call while on the road.

What's more, these offences lie on your licence for four years, thus bumping up your next three or four yearly premiums. Even worse, the police may escalate a mobile-phone offence to a charge of careless or dangerous driving, which carries much heavier penalties. 

Slow down, you move too fast

The AA also warned that few insurance companies are willing to ignore a first SP30 speeding offence nowadays. Almost all insurers now penalise a first SP30 with a premium hike.

Take a look at this second table, which shows the premium increases from one and two SP30 speeding offences:

As you can see, a first speeding fine can lead to your next premium being hiked by 4% to 13%, with the average rise being 8%. Only one of these eight insurers refused to renew a policy after a single SP30.

However, a second fine can send your renewal soaring by between 8% and 35%, with the average increase of 20%. What's more, three of these eight insurers refused to renew after two SP30s, making it much harder for repeat speeders to find replacement cover.

The AA says that these premium increases will remain but reduce over three years. So a single speeding offence costing £60 could cost another £200 extra in higher insurance premiums. This makes the typical £90 charge for a speed-awareness course a much cheaper alternative.

Keep your hands upon the wheel

Finally, a separate survey last week by insurer esure found that around two million British motorists have had an accident or near-miss while driving with only one hand on the wheel.

Also, esure found that drivers who eat at the wheel see their reaction times doubled, placing them at greater risk of accidents. Almost half (47%) of UK motorists admit to driving often with one hand on the wheel, while one in five (20%) admit to smoking while driving.

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