The insurance group that the car belongs in is part of the premium, the age of the driver and where the vehicle’s registered play as much or more in the costs. Might drop some after you’ve been insured a few years, my brother’s insurance went down considerably when he turned 25 and that’s more likely the difference than switching from a '84 Civic to a '86 Jetta.
When Top Gear did an episode with cars for 17yr olds they checked into insurance and in many examples the insurance premium was 15-20x the cost of the car.
I really have no idea. It was 1967 and a long time ago. All I remember is the agent coming to the house and I wrote a check. No idea what the coverages were.
It is not extortion , the price of the vehicle has nothing to do with the cost of Liability insurance . That is the driving factorwhen the young driver hits another vehicle .
Now the cost of a vehicle and it’s risk classification will be concidered for full coverage .
Right there is the reason your insurance is so expensive. The price of the car does not matter as much as that statement. No matter how much you whine, complain, justify or rationalize your driving competency. To the insurance company you will always be “High Risk” deal with it,(or not) and move on.
The average car insurance rate for a 17-year-old on their own policy is $6,272 a year for full coverage – $523 per month. That rate is more than $4,500 higher than the national average of $1,682 for 40-year-old drivers
Obviously, it is less costly to add a teen to his/her parents’ policy, but even that added coverage isn’t cheap.
Steve’s reference to a “T-Plate” is a Temporary Plate, they are usually cardboard and they last only so long before they fade. Having a Faded T-Plate is not a stoppable offence so those folk often drive their beaters for as long as they last…
The latest trend in the NYC Metro area is the printing of counterfeit paper/cardboard tags on a home computer printer. The NYPD has seized scores of these in the last couple of months after stopping drivers for Moving Violations.
The various states need to start including a special and unique laser-printed logo on each temp plate in order to put an end to this type of violation.
Thanks for the information that T=temporary.
When I lived in Utah in the 70s, you would transfer the plates from your old car to the newly purchased car. However, until the registration paperwork was completed and new registration was mailed to you, you were required to display the cardboard temporary tag. On my CJ5 is blew off on the first day, I “illegally” put on my metal license plates.
As I already explained, insurance is often out-of-reach financially for young people, and for those with poor credit. The fact that the law says you must have it, the fact that you can be ticketed or even have your (cheap, beater) car impounded if you’re caught without it is really immaterial, because people in this demographic do not have and cannot get the money to pay hundreds per month for insurance, period.
I would also argue that insurance is really a waste of money unless you have money or property to protect. If you are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and own nothing of value, then the only benefit of being insured is that you don’t have to fear being stopped by police and harassed and ticketed for being caught without it. The insurance itself offers no benefit, because someone this poor wouldn’t pay a judgment anyways.
Obviously, now that I am older and own a house, multiple vehicles, have investment and retirement accounts, etc, it makes sense for me to have good insurance, even though it is very expensive. But the insurance offers a much greater benefit than merely complying with the law–it protects against having my property seized and sold to pay a judgment.
That this basic economic reality is so controversial here is baffling to me. And for the record, only criminal fines and restitution, domestic support obligations, and debts incurred by provable fraud are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. It is still possible to discharge a civil money judgment for damages caused in an at-fault car accident, even if you were driving without insurance or with low policy limits. The only time such a debt would be non-dischargeable is if you were driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol (and criminal DUI charges would have had to be filed).
Just to add my standard lecture that laws are dependent on the majority of the population following them. It is time to reconsider the basic justification for a particular law when you have to go to extreme measures to enforce it.
My law professor would disagree. When the vast majority of the public disagrees with a law or ignores it, it is time to re-evaluate the wisdom of that law.
I first encountered that “wisdom” in Philosophy 101, when I had to do a paper on Ezra Pound, who expounded on that concept. Trust me–you don’t want to wind-up the way that he did.
