Accident Claims Forcing Up Insurance Premiums

Making a claim for a car accident is likely to increase premiums even when the accident occurs through no fault of your own. Car insurance policies include an excess to deter people from making trivial accident claims which cost the insurers millions of pounds.

When claims are made the insurers will then put up premiums to cover the costs and also deter people from making further claims in the future. In some cases the annual insurance premiums can double as a result of an accident claim. This system can seem particularly unfair if the accident was not your fault or if you have been a victim of crime such as theft. If your car insurer does increase your premiums you can always look around for a better deal with cheaper premiums. However there is very little you can do to protect yourself against other drivers on the roads that may cause the accidents in the first place.

Worryingly research conducted by USwitch has found that 33% of motorists in Britain do not know at what speed the national speed limit is set, and fourteen percent of people rely on road signs to inform them of the speed limit for the road they are on. Statistics show that drivers who exceed the speed limit cause over seven thousand accidents every year, of which fourteen percent are fatal. This is an incredibly high number. In addition the research found that more than half the people surveyed did not know who had priority if a set of traffic lights were to fail at a junction. The result of this is more accidents on the roads, which result in more claims for compensation and ultimately higher insurance costs.

Uswitch say that they estimate consumes are paying more that £845 million pounds extra as result of these claims. One reason for this might be the fact that insurance claims have increased in cost over the last five to ten years. It is estimated that there has been a twenty three percent increase in the average car accident claim payout since 2001, which amounts to £355 pounds. On average car insurers are now paying out over £23 million pounds a day for accident claims, which equates to just under one million pounds every hour. This is a staggering amount and makes it easier to understand why insurers increase premiums for drivers who make a claim. However perhaps if people drove more carefully on the roads this figure could be drastically reduced.

But driving more carefully may not be feasible as motorists do not seem to be aware of all the rules of the road. Most drivers take one test in the motoring lifetime, and that may have become a dim and distant memory some years on when they have developed their own perhaps less than perfect driving habits. As part of Uswitch’s research they tested motorists on basic driving theory and found that only one percent of the 2500 respondents answered all of the questions correctly. In addition eight percent of people got all of the questions wrong. It would seem until drivers are required to refresh their memory of important driving knowledge on a more frequent basis, accident claims are still likely to be made, meaning premiums are liable to rise in the future.

Danielle is an author of several articles pertaining to No Win No Fee, Compensation Claims, Accident Claims, Personal Injury Claims and other legal articles.