96% of young drivers priced off the road, announced somewhat exaggerated reports in both Post Magazine and Insurance Times this week.
This startling finding – which hasn’t quite come true yet,* but watch this space – is based on a survey carried out by young persons’ specialist motor insurance (and motor vehicle) provider Young Marmalade.
This found that all but 4% of young drivers now harbour serious doubts about the ongoing affordability of running a car, what with rocketing insurance premiums, rampant economic insecurity, near inevitable unemployment, impending demise of western civilization etc.
Pull yourselves together, Bankstone News says. Remember: without a motor vehicle you are nothing!
Sadly, it seems many youngsters are already turning their backs on private vehicular transportation. But others, thank goodness, are proving more resourceful and have come up with a number of inventive ways to beat the… hang on, what’s this? Dear God, we’ve bred an entire generation of would-be criminals.
One in five young persons is now considering driving without insurance, and fully 30% are happy to contemplate “altering the information they provide to insurers to get a lower quote.”
The survey was carried out “with the backing” of the Transport Select Committee, whose chairbeing Louise Ellman said “I am extremely concerned about these results.”
Meanwhile, Road Tsar Mike Pennis commented: “We know that the cost of insurance is a problem for young drivers” and “we have introduced a new offence of keeping an uninsured vehicle, helping us to take targeted action against uninsured driving, which contributes to higher premiums.”
Interestingly, the survey also found that 41% of young drivers are perfectly well aware that “after an accident, insurance firms often pass personal details to a solicitor, car hire firm or garage in return for a referral fee.”
So they’re not quite as dumb as they look!
* 14% of the 1127 young people responding to the survey said they had passed their test but could not afford a car, 26% said they were driving someone else’s car as a named driver, and a reassuringly low 2% (just 32 of the youngsters questioned) said they have been over the age of 30 when they first started driving lessons. 41% had not yet passed their test, and until Jack Straw (undeterred by his not-“running-the country”-any-more status) has single-handdedly sorted the “parasites” who he says account for £2bn out of £9bn motor insurance premiums, one frankly wonders whether they should bother.
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