Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 31 Mar 2013:
There’s a good reason your van insurance premiums keep going up: the number of accident claims have been soaring, which drive costs up for absolutely everyone.
Whether you’re a White Van Man or you just drive your Vauxhall Astra to work and back home every day, you’re sure to feel plenty of pain whenever it comes time to renew your van or car insurance. The driving force behind these massive premium hikes has been revealed to be largely tied to the number of accident claims being brought against the insurance industry.
The worst part is that there’s really no reason for these heightened number of claims, as roads in the UK are actually safer than they ever have been before according to the Office for National Statistics. Recently released figures from the ONS show how the number of accidents occurring on UK roadways has plummeted over even just the past few years, yet the number of claims arising from these accidents seem to be going up; some of this could be related to fraud, and the nation’s scammers are indeed out in force whilst looking to make a few extra quid at someone else’s expense, but if you ask me the big reason here is the economy: in tough economic times, people involved in accidents are much worse off than they are in times of plenty, which means they are in more dire need of compensation.
it’s certainly a mess, and the only real way to drop accident claim figures is to make the roads just that much safer. One way to do this is to keep a lookout for cyclists, according to driving charity Brake, which recently discovered in a survey that more than 8 out of every 10 cyclists have either been struck by another vehicle or suffered a near-miss.
Cyclists seem to be a favourite target for commercial vehicles in particular, as more than one out of every ten bicycle accidents were at the hands of a van or other commercial vehicle. Based on these results, Brake has urged fleet managers to get their drivers some proper training on manoeuvring their vehicles and keeping an eye out for blind spots, as cyclists are often so small as to slip by nearly unnoticed in a blind spot, only to end up eating pavement thanks to a sudden movement on the part of the van.
Of course, I’m not about to let cyclists off the hook here completely themselves: plenty of time it’s not the fault of the van driver. Cyclists like to squeeze through tight fits if they’re feeling especially cheeky, even though taking these risks certainly exposes them to heightened risk of being involved in an accident, so as much as Brake may say that van drivers need to watch out I think it’s not out of line to tell cyclists to quit mucking about quite so much as well!
