Insurers 1, Uninsured drivers 0

New statistics from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) show that the number of uninsured young drivers has fallen by half over the last three years.

Motor insurers will welcome this statistic, as while the high cost of insurance for young drivers may encourage the cash-strapped to forgo cover and hope they don’t get caught, the insurance industry gets hit in the pocket when the claims for accidents involving uninsured drivers arrive at the MIB’s doorstep.

Combine this with the high number of accidents caused by young drivers, and it’s clear that any cut in the number of uninsureds is welcome.

The combined effect of increased traffic policing and the Continuous Insurance Enforcement legislation is doing a good job of slashing the number of uninsured drivers, and the insurance industry is constantly improving its internal methods of tackling the problem.

But the statistics show that there are still around 125,000 uninsured young drivers and a total of 1.2 million total motorists driving without cover. Considering that there are around 38 million registered drivers in the UK, there is still a lot to be done.

There has been a lot of progress on collaborative work on driving issues that has already been done by the insurance industry and other sectors, so it is a shame that the project to give the insurance industry access to the DVLA driver database is still dragging on. Last month, Insurance Times reported that the project had been delayed due to a dispute over cost between insurers and the DVLA.

This project would give insurers and brokers electronic access to the DVLA’s driver database, stopping drivers from applying for insurance without disclosing the truth about their driving licence.

It is all too easy for would-be drivers to lie on their insurance application forms, knowing that insurers and brokers are very unlikely to check DVLA files manually.

And of course the cost of crashes involving uninsured drivers ends up being shared out through the MIB. The insurance industry has done a lot to tackle unsafe driving, but it is in its best interests to do much more.