In the latest puff piece for sinister self-inflicted black box spy technology, incredulous medical student Matt Crotch told This Is Money! that he’d been quoted £11,000 a year to insure his automotive pride and joy, a bright red 11-year old Toyota Coronary.
What innocent young Matt and his like apparently don’t get is that being quoted an £11k annual premium is the contemporary equivalent of being told in days of yore to come back when you’ve cut down the biggest tree in the forest with a herring or counted the grains of sand on Hestehoved beach.
The good news is that, by voluntarily subjecting himself to having his every move tracked by Tracker, Matt managed to get himself insured in the end for just £500 (with cash off for good behaviour), a massive £10,500 saving!
Articles like this shift vast amounts of ad space to telematics vampires, generally with little or no attempt at balanced reporting, save, in this case, for a lukewarm warning that insurers who reward young drivers’ model on-road citizenship also “penalise them if they have bad technique”.
With average premiums for young drivers now routinely running into four figures (even with a box – unless you are assiduous in minding your Ps and Qs), car ownership is an increasing unaffordable luxury for the yout’ of today.
The latest research by the Co-up, This Is (still) Money reports, shows that one in 12 have had to sell their car because they couldn’t afford it, 4% have taken out a payday loan to cover their premiums, and 60% “regularly borrow from friends or family or sell personal possessions to keep their cars on the road.”
So there really is no alternative: black-box yourselves at once, Kids (let’s face it, you’re quite happy sharing every other detail of your lives via social media)! Unless, of course, you are a) a really terrible driver, b) a bit naughty, c) some kind of criminal lowlife scumbag.
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