Nothing impacts more upon van insurance quotes and subsequent premiums than the massive discounts an accrued no claims bonus can bring, as much as ninety percent in some instances. It is one aspect of van insurance that, once you get to the maximum allowance, usually between seven and nine years blameless driving, you can pay to protect.
Although protecting no claims bonuses doesn’t entirely keep your van insurance premium at the existing rate, it certainly softens the blow that making a claim against your van insurance delivers. One of the most likely ways to jeopardise a previously claim-free driving history is by having the ill fortunate to be in a collision with another driver or a pedestrian not particularly well illuminated in murky driving conditions after the sun sets early in winter.
Although there are times In the year when you seem to be going to work and coming home in the dark, the greater period is the afternoons in winter where it can start to fall dark extremely early, especially after the clocks are put back in October. Driving charity BRAKE believe that, by always being in GMT+1, as we entered yesterday, it would lead to fewer serious collisions and fatal accidents when the afternoons are murky, thus helping retain that cheap van insurance policy you have earned by reducing risk in the winter months when we are in GMT+0.
If UK roads were subject to vehicle-rated deaths spiralling out of control, then BRAKE may have an argument that authorities would listen to. However, with fatal accidents continuing to fall, another 0.5% from the last quarter in 2011, it is highly unlikely that their argument will cut much ice against the benefit that agricultural organisations gain, especially from Yorkshire and further north into Scotland, by the additional hour of daylight in the morning during winter. Indeed, the very reason that daylight saving was introduced, to give more productivity in the war effort from our home grown industries.
As Julie Townsend, the deputy chief executive of BRAKE, alludes, safer roads provided by extended daylight in the evenings and afternoons during winter may help to reduce the number of fatalities by driving. But you also have to consider the other side of the coin.
By making the afternoons lighter, you are making the mornings colder and darker, thus more susceptible to serious accidents, not to mention the effect it would have on farm hands working in even more extreme conditions than they have to already, in winter. Driving in winter before the roads have a chance to start to thaw the overnight frost could be even more damning to UK road safety figures than trying to extend the daylight hours in the afternoon, thus jeopardising your cheap van insurance policy even more.
The other alternative is, of course, to work longer weeks in the summertime when the hours of daylight lend themselves to safer driving conditions for longer periods and reduce the working week in winter time. This would optimise daylight and really give van drivers a chance to protect their insurance through sustained no claims bonus. However, for those who love the early summer evenings and the chance to feel an hour or two of sun on their faces after work, this may also not sit well if working hours were extended. It may also mean committing to fifty-hour weeks in summer and thirty hour weeks in winter. Try getting that past the HSE.