Smoking & Snacking at the Wheel add to your Insurance Premium
New research has found that habits like smoking, eating or texting while driving can add £200 to your car insurance premium.
Drivers eating a snack at the wheel can be charged for ‘driving without due car and attention’ by the police if they’re seen and this can mean they can be fined £60 and given 3 points on their licence. In turn this can increase their insurance hugely.
There are 16,500 motorists every year who are convicted of this type of charge, and insurers see them as accidents waiting to happen and hike up their car insurance costs. The increases can be as much as 27%.
On a survey done by comparison site moneysupermarket.com eight out of ten drivers admitted that they get ‘preoccupied’ while driving.
It seems that dangerous habits can include things like:
Smoking at the wheel
Slowing down to watch accidents
Receiving or making phone calls
Changing the radio station
Worse than this, 23% admitted that they use a mobile phone without using a hands free kit which is illegal.
The worst cases show that if you’re convicted for dangerous driving, it could add over £400 to your insurance costs. Peter Harrison a car insurance expert from moneysupermarket.com said ‘Although it may be unintentional, careless drivers are a menace on the roads and are a danger to both themselves and others. Not only are these bad driving habits, but they’re also expensive habits if you’re caught and it really isn’t worth taking the risk.’
Obviously the difference in increased cost between having a completely clean licence and one with a careless driving conviction will vary according to the insurance company. Axa prices rise by £402.47 while Churchill rises by £371.92 and Swiftcover by just £166.
Of course just getting distracted on its own isn’t enough for you to be convicted. Police would charge you because you were eating a sandwich or using your phone, but then it would be up to the magistrate to decide if your standard of driving fell below that expected of a careful and competent driver. If they deem that it did, then you’ll be convicted of the crime.
Last year, a particularly high profile case of this nature was in the news. We saw Harriet Harman who at the time was deputy leader of the Labour party, fined £350 after she pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention. This came after she’d had a minor collision with a parked car.
Over the last year we’ve seen car insurance costs soar. Particularly for new drivers, premiums have doubled making it increasingly costly to get on the road let alone stay there.