Friday 29th January
Sponsored - Tales from the call centre, part I
Insurance partner Adrian Flux explains why nine points on your licence needn't mean a premium hike
As you will probably be aware PistonHeads has signed up with Adrian Flux as an official insurance partner, with deals for PHers on policies specially tailored to the kind of cars we drive.
As we all know, speed cameras are everywhere - and with mobile vans prowling the highways, they're not always in the same place. So keeping a clean licence is more challenging than it used to be, and some unfortunate drivers can easily go from safe driver to motoring misfit in a few careless months.
As annoying as the three points and £100 fine for each speeding offence are, many people's fears turn to the potentially disastrous effect on their car insurance premium.
But it doesn't need to be that way. After studying the reams of data that comes with working in the insurance industry, here at Adrian Flux we spotted an interesting - but not entirely unexpected - trend: people with nine points on their licence, and therefore one more SP30 away from a ban, tend to drive like they're in the last chance saloon.
We recently gave a quote to Mrs W - a real person who wouldn't want the world to know of her indiscretions - who had managed to tot up points almost as fast as a basketball team. In the space of eight months from July 2013, she went from a motoring paragon of virtue - no accidents, no claims, no current convictions, full no claims bonus - to a pariah on four wheels as far as some insurers were concerned by accumulating nine points to see her teetering on the brink of disqualification.
Judging by the premiums she was quoted, she had - in eight short months - become a terrible driver, a habitual speeder, a careless motoring monster and a danger to other road users. The fact that this short-lived spate of convictions had followed 19 years of blameless driving was of no consequence, and Mrs W's case shows just how easy it is to rack up enough points to leave her on the edge of her driving seat for years to come.
As she explained to us, the first speeding conviction - 37mph in a 30mph limit - was a short cut she was unfamiliar with and believed to be subject to a 40mph limit. Ignorance of the law is no defence, obviously...
A few days later she was stationary at traffic lights when she received a text message. As the lights were still red, she thought she'd have a quick look - clearly paying more attention to her phone than she was the nearby traffic cop poised to pull her over.
She wasn't moving and the lights were red, but the law's the law and the officer in question just happened to be on his way back from an education day advising people on the dangers of using their mobile phone while driving. Unlucky.
Finally, in March last year, Mrs W arrived on the outskirts of a foggy and unfamiliar city, on a big wide road that must surely be a 40mph limit. It wasn't; it was 30mph, and she was once again snapped by an unknown camera lurking in the shadows. Three points, another £100 lighter and a step closer to the dreaded dozen points that normally results in a ban.
She feared the worst at renewal time, but Flux's special scheme for those dicing with the fickle motoring fates, was a voice of sanity in a sea of computer-says-no intransigence. Here we had a motorist who had spent nearly 20 years driving well and had been undone by a sudden rash of indiscretions, none of which were at the "serious" end of speeding offences like driving past a school at 50mph. Mrs W really can't afford to lose her licence, and we imagine she will spend the next few years rigidly adhering to every speed limit.
That's why we quoted her a premium only £2 higher than her pre-points price.
Clearly the last thing we want to do is encourage people to collect points. Points don't make prizes - they ultimately equal disqualification, and it would be insanity for anyone to deliberately go from six points to nine in the hope of saving a few quid on their insurance.
There's still the £100 fine to factor in, plus the months or years of driving on the edge of a ban...