Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 10 July 2013:
There’s nothing wrong with a few pints now and again, but if you get into your van afterwards and go plowing into an elderly couple you’re part of the problem.
In fact, you’re going to see your van insurance costs rise by an average of 121 per cent. Yes, that’s more than double – and that’s only if your car insurance provider doesn’t drop you like a hot stone!
An insurance comparison site recently uncovered this new information this week, publishing the figures in a fanfare of warnings such as ‘drink driving is bad.’ Listen, it doesn’t take a genius to know that, but it’s not just because you’re going to end up with a massive fine and heightened insurance costs – if you end up damaging someone’s property or heavens forbid cause a serious injury to someone else, you’re going to be responsible for a massive insurance claim, which raises rates for everyone else as well because we have to pay for your idiot mistake, so just don’t do it mate.
Of course things are most likely going to get worse before they get better on this front, as another news story I read this week detailed how the number of traffic police on duty in the UK have been slashed by 12 per cent over the past five years. This means that with fewer police on the roads watching for drink drivers, more people are slipping through the cracks and potentially causing life-threatening harm to others.
Road safety charity Brake said in a recent statement that some police forces have seen reductions as high as 30 per cent to 40 per cent, believe it or not! Welsh traffic police figures are down 31 per cent for example, while the English average was 13 per cent – yet somehow Scotland’s traffic police figures actually increased by 4 per cent. I’m not sure if there’s a culturally insensitive drunken Scotsman quip in there or not, though.
Brake is quite concerned at these cuts, especially in locales such as Dfed Powys and South Wales where the average cuts stood at around 40 per cent. It’s even worse in Bedfordshire where traffic police presence has been scaled back by 44 per cent, so use that information to your advantage if you’re going to be in those areas any time soon, either because you live nearby or you’re making a delivery there in your commercial van.
This is a serious problem if you ask me. We need more police on the roads checking for bad motorists, not less – I would brace yourself for another insurance rate hike if I was you, because if these figures are accurate it’s almost guaranteed that accident figures are going to jump.