The view of Swinton, the biggest insurance broker on the high street, is that drivers with six points plus on their licence will soon be the norm, categorised as standard.
With the advent of the speed camera and the often scandalously low speeds at which they are set to trigger, Swinton feel it is not right to automatically penalise drivers because of these points. Bearing in mind the fact that approximately six million drivers have points on their licence, which is over ten percent of the whole population of the country, the approach from the insurer seems a very fair and sensible one.
Swinton are taking the view that the driver with six points on their licence today is as safe as the one who had three points five years ago and no points ten years ago. We just hope other insurers follow suit.
Car insurance company Admiral have been looking at car theft and what is taken, with some surprising results.
The most common items that are taken from vehicles, not including stereo systems, are individual CDs, satellite navigation systems and MP3 players. After these come jackets, mobiles and laptop computers. Perhaps a little more surprising though are some other items that Admiral found car thieves have taken, including disco lights, celery, sandwiches and a wet suit!
Admiral also worked out the typical value of items in the average family car, coming up with a figure of GBP2,800 per vehicle. With such a sum of items that can be taken it is important to ensure car insurance covers these different areas to make sure the value of goods taken is covered as well as the car itself.
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.
