Insurance: better systems

cantdecide

You hear from time to time about people getting into trouble with insurance. An example would be driving your mate's lgv on your car third-party-extension or thinking your TPE applies to another car you own or being assured wrongly that you're driving on an open driving policy. I think the system we have makes it easy for well meaning people to get into trouble.

What alternatives are out there and if there are better systems should or could they be considered by Irish motorists?

Anan1

cantdecide wrote: »

I think the system we have makes it easy for well meaning people to get into trouble.

Honestly, I don't. Just don't assume you're insured without verifying it and there's no problem.

cantdecide

cantdecide wrote: »

I think the system we have makes it easy for well meaning people to get into trouble.

What alternatives are out there and if there are better systems should or could they be considered by Irish motorists?

Folks should read their policy. If folks were that well meaning they'd ensure they were insured by reading their policy.

MidlandsM

As I said in another insurance thread, most people wrongly focus on price on taking out or renewing cover, never the level of cover they have.

Atomic Pineapple

Maybe break cover down further under the fully comp and 3rd party headings, so say you have Full comp - green level cover meaning your insured to drive other cars and yours has open driving, then orange meaning your covered on less and red meaning just your own car, something along those lines?

Anan1

draffodx wrote: »

Maybe break cover down further under the fully comp and 3rd party headings, so say you have Full comp - green level cover meaning your insured to drive other cars and yours has open driving, then orange meaning your covered on less and red meaning just your own car, something along those lines?

I think there are too many variables for that to work. For example, is the insured covered to drive other cars tp or comp? Does the other car need its own policy? Is open driving 17-70, 25-70 or 30-70? Full license only or learner permit too? Too many colours.;)

cantdecide

Surely a simplified, less tailored system would be more fair to everyone? Maybe it would mean less admin for the insurance companies. At the moment, I could spend many hundreds of euro on insurance and still be the only one who may use the car without a lot of pre-planning and further expense.

I also paid IR£3,885.85 (an unforgetable number to me) for my first insurance back in 2000. A situation like this is hardly fair. I keep hearing about situations abroad where you buy a car, put something akin to open insurance on it for a fairly standard figure and bobs your uncle.

oldyouth

Insure the person, not the car, for liability using ANY vehicle on the road. Let the owner of the car insure it for own damage or loss if they want to.

Simples

djimi

cantdecide wrote: »

You hear from time to time about people getting into trouble with insurance. An example would be driving your mate's lgv on your car third-party-extension or thinking your TPE applies to another car you own or being assured wrongly that you're driving on an open driving policy. I think the system we have makes it easy for well meaning people to get into trouble.

What alternatives are out there and if there are better systems should or could they be considered by Irish motorists?

The alternative is to employ an insurance person to accompany you wherever you go, so that they can advise you on the finer details of the policy you were too lazy to read and how they apply to the situation you happen to be in...

There is a lot that can be improved about insurance in Ireland; pretty much every aspect of the current system in fact, but you cant compensate for someone who doesnt read the legal document they are signing...

lau1247

they should do it like the asian countries..

insurance is on the car and isn't tied to to owner.

Therefore if i have a car and it is insured, anyone can drive provided that they are legal to drive (i.e. have licence).. that would be a much better system and also it doesn't discriminate against gender

and no I'm not starting a gender debate again

djimi

lau1247 wrote: »

they should do it like the asian countries..

insurance is on the car and isn't tied to to owner.

Therefore if i have a car and it is insured, anyone can drive provided that they are legal to drive (i.e. have licence).. that would be a much better system and also it doesn't discriminate against gender

and no I'm not starting a gender debate again

How does it work when a driver crashes? Do they have a personal NCB or something like that?

lau1247

djimi wrote: »

How does it work when a driver crashes? Do they have a personal NCB or something like that?

not sure about the full details regarding NCB, but the claim is based on the car's insurance policy as far as I'm aware

Anan1

lau1247 wrote: »

they should do it like the asian countries..

insurance is on the car and isn't tied to to owner.

Therefore if i have a car and it is insured, anyone can drive provided that they are legal to drive (i.e. have licence).. that would be a much better system

Sounds like forcing the low-risk drivers to subsidise the higher risk ones to me?

oldyouth

lau1247 wrote: »

they should do it like the asian countries..

insurance is on the car and isn't tied to to owner.

Therefore if i have a car and it is insured, anyone can drive provided that they are legal to drive (i.e. have licence).. that would be a much better system and also it doesn't discriminate against gender

and no I'm not starting a gender debate again

It wouldn't work here. How can an insurer know what to charge where, for example, one Ford Focus is usually driven by an experienced 40yr old lady and another Ford Focus is being driven by a 17yr old male. In an ideal world, we would all pay the same, but it doesn't work like that in real life.

Cars do not cause accidents, drivers do. Insurers have the statistics on the driver profile that cause what level of accidents, so to charge varying amounts per driver and let them drive any vehicle is an option.

Bottom line is, unless the Government controls compensation for road accidents, the category who cause the most losses will pay for their exploits. When it comes to driving of other cars extension or open driving extensions, Insurers will not allow drivers they do not wish to cover coming in by stealth

robtri

cantdecide wrote: »

You hear from time to time about people getting into trouble with insurance. An example would be driving your mate's lgv on your car third-party-extension or thinking your TPE applies to another car you own or being assured wrongly that you're driving on an open driving policy. I think the system we have makes it easy for well meaning people to get into trouble.

What alternatives are out there and if there are better systems should or could they be considered by Irish motorists?

Does anybody actually thinkstheir private car insurance cover driving LGV ???

simplest way is to insure the driver not the car...

kippy

Insuring the driver and not the car would lead to drastically higher premia for all I would think.
The system we have is fairly okay to be honest, apart from the valuations that are sometimes worked out when you write off the car.
Once you read your policy, are aware of what you are covered for and have done your homework on the cheapest policy for your circumstances then theres not too much to complain about.

cantdecide

Anan1 wrote: »

Sounds like forcing the low-risk drivers to subsidise the higher risk ones to me?

When you were 17, you were a certain risk. When you will be 65, you will be a different risk. Surely, the whole purpose of insurance is spreading risk so why is it okay to screw certain people (as long as they're young enough to have no rights)?

At the moment, I'd say the high risk drivers are probably subsidizing the low risk ones so why shouldn't it work the other way?

Imagine fixed price insurance where the only variable was your personal ncb. If the insurance was open to everyone (over 23 maybe), then it would make things much easier. Our existing system is set up for the benefit of the insuance companies.

What actually got me thinking about this was watching Road Wars (I know :rolleyes:) and seeing police actually ringing insurance companies and seeing if particular motorists had open driving. I thought that it was ludicrous to have to do that as a policeman.

At one stage, I rang up my insurance company to temporarily transfer my insurance onto my old car to move it. I complained that they wanted money for this and she suggested I get a mate to shift it using his TPE. I reminded her that since my old car had no insurance on it, the TPE wouldn't be an option. Her reply: "errr...oh yeah".

What about being hit by a stolen car where the driver is uninsured. You'll get sorted out if you have years to wait.

It all seems unnecessarily complicated.