Car Insurance

Update: Paid for insurance from new supplier. As the old insurance was set to auto-renew I had to go on-line to cancel this renewal. The old insurer instantly reduced the renewal quote by £30. Not enough to make the price competitive (by quite a margin). Having gone to my new insurer's web site and checking more small print and policy details I actually have slightly better cover and at a price around 1% more than I paid last year. What I have seen on the money saving expert site and confirmed by the comparison site the sweet spot for getting quotes is around 4 weeks before the insurance is due. Leave it any later and the quoted prices tend to rise.

On my car with a heated windscreen it would cost £300+ to replace but around £100 excess payment with insurance. The difference in the insurance quote between those who offer cover and those who don't was minimal.

My car doesn't have anything else (cameras/sensors etc.) connected to the windscreen) but if they had been installed the cost of the windscreen replacement would have be higher.

Mine has a camera, light sensor and rain sensor, the last replacement cost me £100 excess, no idea the actual cost, but required an extra one hour appointment for re-calibration.

On average I seem to collect enough stone chips every 3-4 years to need a replacement for MOT purposes, I won't be getting one of the policies without glass cover while the saving is only £25.

Took a test drive, and the safety beeps seem easy enough to turn off/down, I'm sure I'll soon get used to the speed limit endlessly flashing in the display :-)

Over speed beeps are a legal compulsory feature now on new cars. They can be turned off but you may have to do it every time the car is started.

I realise that, but the beep volume level can be turned down (to almost inaudible) which supposedly doesn't return to default volume every time ...

True on mine, the volume setting is retained. You can't stop the speed limit sign on the dash from flashing at you though!

nib

HSBC have made online payments much easier than they used to be in such circumstances.

There used to be an incredible hoop to jump through involving re-entering the the account number of the payee in some garbled form. All gone now.

Which is particularly annoying when the displayed speed limit is wrong.

I use the cruise / speed limit control in the same way (it doesn't require the sat-nav to be in use).

Even without speed control - which I think is one of the most useful improvements of the last couple of decades - my last speeding ticket was in 1980.

I'm with First Direct who still use the HSBC system. Silly thing is once you have a payee set up you can pay up to your daily limit with no further checks.

The money saving expert site suggests that insurance premiums are around

My recent renewal quote was around 25% up! Shopping around I got slightly better cover for a small amount over last year's price. I have however reached the age (71) where premiums do tend to increase.

A failure by the camera to read a speed sign isn't the only problem.

There are a number of local places where the camera spots the speed sign on a side road, and assumes it applies to the road I am on. This happens every time I pass that point.

I've had renewals which were cheaper than the previous year - but I also had one (2022??) where the premium had increased by 108% from the previous year (i.e. more than doubled). No change in vehicle, or drivers, no change in circumstances, no claims made. Nothing at all. I did not renew.

I've read of at least one near-accident where an 'intelligent' car read the speed limit sign on a road running parallel to a motorway and suddenly applied the brake hard at 70MPH.

In message <Mo7eR.30708$s snipped-for-privacy@fx15.ams, at 18:23:40 on Tue, 27 Jan

Ironically, my car thinks about a mile of road I drive on quite often, which is absolutely definitely 30mph, has a 20 limit. Meanwhile it's oblivious to recently introduced 20mph limits (some on roads which used to be 40) and of course any of the fashionable "variable" speed limits on Motorways and Trunk roads.

In message snipped-for-privacy@jrenewsid.jretrading.com>, at

GPS-based systems have been reported as claiming the speed limit on a motorway was 30mph, when that in fact applied to a local road crossing it above.

Motorways often have variable speed limits*. The safety issue may be when the limit is actually 30mph rather than 70mph.

I collected the car yesterday, it gives a short beep for every speed change, and if you are then over that changed limit it gives three softer beeeeeps, after which it realises you're not slowing down, so it gives-up flashing and beeping.

The amber (non-flashing) backlights in the door mirrors cover a lot more than the actual blindspots, but are basically useful.

I didn't try the lane-keeping yet (off by default) but I think it sometimes beeps just by crossing patches of paint within the lanes, not sure about that.

Now consider the impact of this sort of *assistance* for one who learned to drive in 1961 and has only used conventional vehicles since:-(