Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 31 Jan 2013:
It’s true that some motoring costs like car insurance and van insurance have eased this year, but unfortunately other costs are rising higher and higher.
The good news is that insurance rates have fallen by 14.1 per cent year-on-year according to the AA’s latest research. This is even more noteworthy because the motoring organisation has never seen such a drop ever; the source of the downward spiral has been linked to insurers both responding to a highly competitive environment and trying to stay ahead of the curve prior to new rules that could be going into effect soon that are specifically engineered to reduce the impact of fraudulent whiplash claims.
Now if this keeps up it will be fantastic, but shedloads of insurance experts say that there’s a danger of things dropping down so low that the market can’t support it, with the result of prices rebounding back up towards much more expensive rates. However, even if this doesn’t happen there are some ridiculous other costs that motorists have to worry about, and anyone who makes a living behind the wheel like a white van man has to worry about things like road fines, which have been rocketing upwards over the years.
In fact, new research discovered that motorists had to pay more than 1.3 million road fines during the 2011-2012 financial year, all for minor offences. This was found to be 16 per cent higher than the previous year – and represented a cost of £135 million to all the motorists that had to pay these fines! That’s a lot of money, and it’s most likely less about keeping the roads safe and more about generating revenue for local authorities. I mean let’s be serious here for a moment – do we really need all these traffic cameras set up in strange locations that aren’t necessarily high-accident areas just so the local council can generate some more money for their coffers?
Let’s get real – the nation’s roads are much safer then they’ve ever been, and I highly doubt that it’s the number of traffic cameras or motoring offences that are being handed out by police. Accident rates have been coming down consistently for years, and I’d like to know if there’s any research linking higher road offences to safer roads; somehow I sincerely doubt it though. Why are the roads safer than ever but local authorities are penalising drivers for this? We don’t need this kind of madness on our roads, as it’s hard enough to keep the fuel tank full with rising petrol costs and other things.