Wednesday 18th February 2004

Teenagers aren't worst Speeders

Youngsters don't speed yet are greater insurance risk?

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Teenagers are not the worst offenders when it comes to speeding.

New statistics on speeding convictions from a leading insurance intermediary do not rank a single teen in the top ten.

Statistics just released by The Allen and Allen Group, which specialises in the insurance of young people, high performance vehicles and non-standard risks, show that the worst speeders are those who are older.

Top spot in the leading motor insurance broker’s figures went to 25-year olds, who accounted for just over 5% of the total number of convictions. Perhaps more revealing is the fact that the next two worst offenders were drivers aged 30 and 29 respectively.

In fact, the first teen – 17-year olds – only ranked 19^th in the list with a total of 59 convictions, and were easily eclipsed by drivers as old as 38, 39 and 41. 19-year olds were 24^th in the list and 18-year olds could only manage a lowly 33^rd place.

"The figures turn public perception on its head, and whilst not based on the whole industry, the statistics are still enough of a representative sample to make insurers stop and reconsider their approach to this group ," says Tony Allen, Chief Executive of The Allen and Allen Group.

"Actually, given that we specialise in the insurance of young motorists and those with convictions, you might have expected the figures to be more heavily weighted against the lower age groups. It may be that teenagers would come out even better in an all industry survey .

"This is a very timely topic bearing in mind that speed issues are top of most people’s agenda at the moment with the ongoing controversy over speed cameras, fines and points. The numbers in this survey alone suggest there are a lot of people out there that may be teetering on the brink of losing their licence or facing large rises in their insurance premiums in the near future. Perhaps its time the industry thought less about the age of drivers and more about the consequences of this repressive policy of penalising motorists ," he adds.

It would be interesting to have these figures cross references against accident claims...

[jimbro1000]

Ok - so they have a chart of convictions against age, fine and dandy, but do they have a corrected chart that takes miles driven per driver per year (more miles you do, the more likely you are to be caught) and the size of each age group - of course 17, 18 and 19yr olds are going to be low on the chart as there are fewer of them on the road in comparison.

by statistics!

[cptsideways]

Teenagers are the MOST LIKELY to be involved in death related crashes, yet obviously speed is not something they do a lot of.

Wipes out the speed kills thing does'nt it, you effing camera partnerships should be abolished. Teach people to drive for ***** sake.



You watch your speedo & I'll watch the road

[streaky]

jimbro1000 said:

Ok - so they have a chart of convictions against age, fine and dandy, but do they have a corrected chart that takes miles driven per driver per year (more miles you do, the more likely you are to be caught) and the size of each age group - of course 17, 18 and 19yr olds are going to be low on the chart as there are fewer of them on the road in comparison.

Or what about any correlation between age and accidents; or between age, speed and accidents? Whilst this might appear to be good news for younger drivers, who will bear the brunt of any decrease in premiums? And there isn't a prize for the correct answer - Streaky

[squirrelz]

Lies, damn lies, and statistics again.

Of course a 30 year old is going to have a higher number of convictions - they've had 13 years to rack them up. A 19 year old has only had 2 years.

[Plotloss]

Would like to see accidents by age as surely thats what the insurance companies are basing their actuarial tables on.

If insurance was based on what could potentially happen rather than what has happened in the past it would be a non starter...

More speed = accident bollocks.

[vladd]

I've only had one crash and it was when I was 20.

Anybody else want to own up and we'll see if we can get our own average here.

[julianhj]

My only proper accident happened when I was 19.

Accidents are down to bad driving technique (whether that's poor observation/control or inappropriate use of speed etc.) - the older you are, the more experience you have, the less likely you are to put yourself in a dangerous situation.

I'm sure I speed more now that 8/9 years ago, but I'm absolutely certain my driving standards have increased exponentially.

IMHO of course

[d-man]

Note they're basing their results on insured drivers too.

I'd guess that insurance for a teenage driver with points on their licence is going to be so high (if they can get it at all) that a good number won't bother. Also can't you lose your licence much more easily the first couple of years you have it or something? Perhaps more young people are getting disqualified because of this and so don't need insurance anyway.

As for the accidents straw poll, are we talking any accidents or only at fault ones? Only accident I've been involved in was when I was 18. Someone coming the other way managed to use me to stop them going into a ditch. Hit my Mini a glancing blow behind the rear wheel, which was a pretty impressive feat in itself. If I'd been going a bit faster she'd have missed me completely, bit slower and she might have come through the drivers door, which would have been bad

[pmanson]

vladd said:

I've only had one crash and it was when I was 20. Anybody else want to own up and we'll see if we can get our own average here.

21 Now.

I was hit in the side at the ripe old age of 18 (July 01).
Got a conviction at 19 (12/02/2002 TS10 - Went through a amber traffic light and was stopped by 4 police cars but thats another story!).
Have completed the PassPlus course and an 8hr RideDrive course.
When not at uni I drive about 25,000 miles per year.

Yet i'm still more of a risk to insure than most people.

I would of thought that as I do more miles per year I should get a higher no claims discount the next year as i do twice the average annual mileage without any accidents!

>> Edited by pmanson on Wednesday 18th February 09:51

[rude girl]

cptsideways said:

You watch your speedo & I'll watch the road

I get your point, but whenever I see this quote, I always think it's a bit daft, and doesn't sit with Pistonheads' accepted view of improving driver skills.

I don't have any problem watching both. Not to say that I'm always observing the speed limit of course, but I think that if you can't check your instruments(and temp/oil etc) whilst maintaining control of your vehicle in its environment, you definitely haven't got the skills to cope with higher speeds and should not be speeding.

[martin robson]

Maybe older drivers get caught speeding because thay can afford to insure faster cars. All the 17 year olds in asthmatic little saxos and novas can't go any faster if they tried!!

[sublimatica]

How about this alternative: drivers in their '20s and '30s get caught for speeding more than teenagers because we arrogantly believe we can judge a safe speed better than the authorities can and that speed limits are generally unfair symptoms of the Nanny State? Teenagers are on a learning curve and therefore (mostly) more nervous about losing control.

As confidence increases, so does nerve (but note: not necessarily skill). Between the ages of late '20s to late '30s we've been driving for a good few years and we've seen most things, therefore we think we're perfect drivers and can judge our speed perfectly too. Consequently we get caught speeding more. Older people are more laid back and mature (read: less arrogant), while the younger ones are still nervous.

Wouldn't have thought it was mileage-related. Plenty of folk in their '40s and '50s do very high mileages, but we don't see them in these statistics.

[safespeed]

I have been reporting this effect about a year:

www.safespeed.org.uk/wrong.html

North Wales Police reported that they had only issued 3.6% of speeding tickets to drivers under 25 while The BBC reported that 80% of excessive speed accidents in Northern Ireland were caused by the under 25s.

I know Northern Ireland is different to North Wales, but come on - 22 times different? I don't think so.

The fact is that young drivers (relatively) get into a load of trouble by failing to perceive hazards and by failing to slow down when necessary - yet the cameras do not detect these failings that lead to excessive speed accidents.

It's one more nail in the coffin of flawed speed camera policy. I wrote to North Wales Police about it too. Did I get an answer? Nope. I complained to North Wales Police Authority. Did I get an answer? Nope.

These people are behaving like complete cowboys.

Best Regards,
Paul Smith
Safe Speed
www.safespeed.org.uk

[DanCov]

Its a shame that all younger drivers get stereotyped when a vast majority know the importance of safe driving. Ive been driving for nearly a year and a half now and I consider myself to be a safe driver, it just annoys me that I have to pay for others mistakes but I guess we all have to start somewhere!

[streaky]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

And it will get added to the anecdotal "evidence" quoted by all and sundry, eventually taking on the mantle of truth.

As will all statistics (and especially those used to justify anything to do with road safety) as soon as you (or Paul Smith) take the lid off the barrel you find that most of the apples are bad. Then, when you (or PS) ask questions about this, you are branded a trouble-maker (or worse) and people are ordered to stop talking to you.

Bah!

Streaky

[v8thunder]

DanCov said:

Its a shame that all younger drivers get stereotyped when a vast majority know the importance of safe driving. Ive been driving for nearly a year and a half now and I consider myself to be a safe driver, it just annoys me that I have to pay for others mistakes but I guess we all have to start somewhere!

I am frankly insulted by the attitude that ensures all young people (especially young men) get branded as bad drivers. I have been driving for four years now. I try not to speed, I've never hit anyone or anything and my friends all cite me as a good driver.

However, I have been in enough adult-driven cars to know that the biggest killer seems to be complacency and lack of road/car knowledge. So many people I know just drift around at 39mph everywhere, believing that the safest things you can do in a car are:
-keep to the speed limit
-hold the wheel at 10 to 2
-complain about every single young man in a car, calling him a 'boy racer'

Young people on the other hand are well aware that if they mess up, they'll have to pay stratospheric insurance premiums, a huge payment to cover damages simply due to their age, the police will confiscate their licence on the spot and they won't be able to drive for a considerable time anyway because the cost of the insurance will eclipse the cost of any car in their price bracket several times.

I think the courts get too involved. I know driving dangerously is an offence, but surely if you damage someone's property the insurance costs should simply be the cost of repair/replacement.

I'm surprised they don't look at factors such as mileage travelled. If you were a sales rep, constantly on the road to and from every town and city, you're going to be more likely to crash, more likely to be tired and surely surceptible to road rage.

I can't understand why insurance costs can ever be worth more than a car - it's madness.

[-bacchus-]

v8thunder said:

[I'm surprised they don't look at factors such as mileage travelled.

Some companies do offer reductions for low mileage drivers.

[Ean218]

v8thunder said:

I can't understand why insurance costs can ever be worth more than a car - it's madness.

That is very simple to answer. If, whilst driving your £200 Nova, you kill or seriously injure a fellow human being, the compensation for which you, and therefore your insurance company, will be liable will be astronomical.
Insurance is based on risk assessment, Young lads are a greater risk than their fathers, full stop.

[daydreamer]

v8thunder said:

I can't understand why insurance costs can ever be worth more than a car - it's madness.

It's because the ammount of damage that you could possibly do (and the group of people that you are categorised with do do) is also worth significantly more than the car. We need to understand the mechanisms before we argue against them! Insurance companies don't personally dislike young drivers, just the ammount of money that they cost them!

I think that the point being made here by PetrolTead and SafeSpeed is that the number of serious accidents does not have any correlation to the number of times people get caught speeding. Not a fully representitive survey, no, but I believe that most of us would concurr with this view based on experience.

This will not lead to a drop in premiums for young drivers, because as a group, they have more accidents. However, it may bring an end to a £100 premium increase due to having three points.

From a wider standpoint, it should (but won't) influence the authorities in how they police our roads.

Insurance premiums are possibly the best motivator for change that there is. If we ever get to a position where the consequences of not having insurance ammount to more than the premiums , then if the companies were offering a £500pa discount for £1000 worth of additional training, then everybody would take it (even those of us that think that we don't need it)! Taking the population as a whole, we would be safer and have less accidents.

Job done!

Rich

[sagalout]

V*T said

I can't understand why insurance costs can ever be worth more than a car - it's madness.[/quote]

'cos a life is worth much more than a car!

Yes the older driver can be more complaicent but the younger driver is less experienced and therefore much more likely to get into a dangerous situation or worse. Whilst they know they will be financially penalised if they mess up, they can have a sense of being invulnerable, leaving them hurt or worse. Many aren't insured properly anyway, either not at all or on Mummys policy.

I know, i was a younger driver and the situations I got into in my teens/20's frightems me now.

Experience is a great thing you only get with time.