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Leaves college Friday evening and gets home about 0100 Saturday. Leaves for college at about 0400 Monday to get in for 0830. So, that would be four hours per week of peak travel, about half of the 450-mile round trip. Nearly all of the trip is motorway or motorway-standard road carrying very light traffic, and hence "low risk".

FWIW, my slight underestimate of actual peak-hours mileage will very quickly swallow up that <fe>generous</fe> allowance.

Now, I strongly suspect that those who do the most mileage during "peak hours" would be using arterial routes with light traffic, and hence using those roads when they are safest. To rack up that mileage, you have to be travelling reasonably quickly, which is something that you can't (or rather, shouldn't) do in built-up areas. This is one reason why such a draconian scheme would be so unfair because it penalises disproportionately with respect to actual risk.

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Will

I wouldn't want to presume that, especially not given the distances involved and the note that the mileage was being done at the weekend... sounds to me like this person is returning to the parental home each weekend (possibly late on a Friday evening) and then heading back to their student digs nearer the college (possibly early on a Monday morning).



But if you're doing 200 on-peak miles a week, having a 100 mile a month allowance really isn't going to make much difference.

Sorry, misunderstood you, I thought you were referring to daily commuting

Obviously then this scheme wouldn't be suitable for that person - but there are plenty of other insurance policies available.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

For now maybe, but how long before they all implement something similar? In ten years time it may not be possible to get insurance unless you have the tracker fitted.

Max

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Tailgaters - Please Pass
You have an Accident to go to!

This is why something has to be done about the insurance cartel having the British motorist "over a barrel". The profit-driven insurance companies currently have more power to determine who can legally drive what than does any legally elected or publically-accountable body. They can force into "de-facto law" any measure they see fit by making such measure a condition of using their product. We are legally bound to accede to their totalitarianism because we are legally bound to use their product.

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Will

That's right, and it may be less than 10 years. Pay as you go pings heavy mileage users the most, so many light users will want this system to avoid high charges. Heavy users won't want it, but light users will not subsidise them any more, so the cost of unmetered insurance will rise. As it goes up in price, it will become rarer.

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I stole this .sig

Government is notoriously bad at implementing services. Insurance covers the risk you represent to the community so it is right that high risk users pay a lot, and low risk users pay a little. One way to get cheaper insurance is to pay as you go. That way, you can build up a low-risk reputation over a period of years of low mileage, and get cheap insurance later.

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I stole this .sig

The huge problem with that is that risk tends to become lower with experience. The highest mileage drivers quickly gain that experience and so should present the lowest risk. Also, I suspect that drivers who do the highest mileages tend to use the safest roads (motorways and arterial routes) for a much larger proportion of their driving than do low-mileage drivers. So, pay as you go would have the lowest-risk drivers paying the most for insurance and so subsidising the highest-risk groups -- which can't be fair and certainly flies in the face of your later post:


Under PAYG, whatever you pay you most definitely would not be paying proportionate to the risk you represent to the community. Even under the present system, you don't pay proportate to the risk you represent to the community, you pay proportionate to the risk you represent to the insurance company, which is not the same thing. This means that someone who has had years of accident-free motoring could find their low-risk status demolished by an incident for which they were not to blame but where cost of the loss could not be recovered from the culprit. For example, the classic car-park shunt or an uninsured driver.

FWIW, I don't agree that high-risk drivers should pay more for third-party insurance than everyone else. There should be a compensation scheme to replace third-party insurance and that should be centrally funded. As much as I dislike Paul's idea of funding such a scheme through increased fuel duty, IMO it is very much preferable to the current cartel. At least that way people would not be penalised in no-blame situations and existing laws would cater for the culprits where they could be apprehended.

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Will