The largest insurer in the UK, Norwich Union, has suspended what had been described as a ground breaking form of car insurance that used a black box to track every journey.
The idea was to set premiums based on the risks faced by drivers. This would mean that drivers avoiding rush hour or late night driving would pay less for their car insurance. Norwich Union cited a slow take up of the idea and too few customers as the key factors for withdrawing the car insurance scheme.
There has also been a certain amount of mistrust from drivers regarding the black box. Having every journey monitored is not what Britain is about and there could be situations where a drivers Norwich Union car insurance policy could be negated if a vehicle was seen to be speeding at any time, or even have the data passed to the police. All in all most people feel the withdrawal of the black box idea is a good result and hope that it will not see the light of day again.
After a study of the data gained through the Tesco car insurance comparison site it has been found that car choice is determined a lot by the age of the driver.
The typical Jaguar driver, for example, is 47 years old, whilst if it is a Mercedes then they will be, on average, 43. Moving down a little on the age groups, Volvo drivers tend to be around 42 whilst Porsche drivers, specifically of the 911, Boxster and Cayenne will be around 40 years old.
These marques are only a small sample from the full list, but one thing that is immediately apparent is that, with the average value of these cars higher than the general runabout drivers may well need to be 40 plus in order to get car insurance cover at a reasonable premium, from Tesco Finance or anyone else.
In a somewhat surprising comment Yes Insurance have asked for fire engines to be yellow rather than the traditional red.
The request comes following the insurers research in to vehicle colours and how safe they are, research that supplements other studies already carried out. Yes Insurance found that lime yellow is one of the safest colours on the road thanks to its high visibility both at night and day plus in poor weather, when it cuts through poor visibility better than any other.
A further reason Yes Insurance asked for the red paint to be swapped on fire engines for yellow was that red can often be perceived as black when it is dark, plus red is quite hard to see from drivers peripheral vision. These two issues are quite serious for an emergency vehicle that is often out when it is dark and also tries to get through traffic from all angles.
