The price you pay for your insurance is mainly decided on two factors. One is the cost of your car and the other is your driving experience. But in your case, you are not an experienced driver and hence the later factor doesn’t provide you any advantage. This is why you will end up paying much more for a cover than what an experienced driver pays for the same cover. However, there are certain steps that you can follow to offset this disparity.

Make Your Car Safe and Secure

Your first step starts from the very moment when you go in a showroom for buying your new car. Before buying your car, make sure that the car adheres to all standards of anti-theft and low risk features applied in UK. You can help yourself reduce your first premium by simply investing in more secure than average car.

However, if you already own a car, then try to include all those safety features and anti-theft features that you can afford. Any feature that helps protect your car in case of an accident or from theft, further increases the chance for you to get cheap premiums for new drivers and for your insurer to save his money as well and they’ll love you for this.

Convince the Insurer

There is another thing that not every person, going to get insurance cover, is aware of. An insurer determines the cost of a policy and its premiums based on what he thinks your car is worth of and not on what you think your car is worth of. For example, let’s assume you have bought a car worth £5000, while its retail/book value is £4000 only. Now, if you tell your insurer that you have actually bought the car for £5000 instead of buying at its book value, the insurer will be happy to insure your policy for £5000 and not for £4000. This will make your policy expensive including your premiums too. This is why it is in your own interest to convince your insurer to go for the lower price, that is, the real market value at the time of insuring.

Enquire about Discounts

If you happen to be a student, you must enquire about the availability of any student discount on your insurance cover. There are some policies that provide discounts for getting high GPA too. Never assume that the insurer will tell you about the discount automatically. He will always try to sell you the policy at a higher price without giving any discounts. So, it is your duty to ask for any available discounts and get cheap car insurance as a new driver.

What’s a learner driver insurance?
For starters, car insurance is like an agreement between a driver and a company that helps to protect unforeseen misfortunes such as the loss or damage of a car. In the agreement, the company agrees that in cases of mishaps, the company will be responsible to maintain the upkeep of the car. The driver responds to this gesture by paying a fee as they both agree. As for learners, the process is just the same except that the importance attached to obtaining leaner driver insurance is much more than that for already experienced drivers. This is good for learners as they would not have to worry a lot if they get involved in any fatal accidents. The truth is that provisional drivers are the major causes of road accidents in the UK today.

Types of provisional driver insurance
Obtaining insurance for leaner drivers is not meant to be a burden. For this reason, insurance companies find it important to establish three main types of insurance to make it affordable and flexible for vehicle users. The types are:
Third party insurance: Obtaining a third party insurance gives a driver the insurance of covering expenses that he may have spent if he was involved in an accident that caused damages on someone else. With third party insurance, UK drivers can comfortably drive along the road without any disturbance from the police. A third party insurance cannot provide compensation to the owner of the car or anything belonging to the owner, which the car damages.

Third party fire and theft- Just like the name implies, this insurance covers the third party and compensation for the owner of the car only if the there was a fire disaster on it or if the car was stolen. The third parties include those who were in the car when any disaster occurred and the owners of affected cars or properties in an unfortunate occurrence.

Fully comprehensive insurance- Learner drivers who get a fully comprehensive insurance are sure to insure both themselves and any third party should any disaster occur. This is the best for learner drivers who have just got a provisional licence since they are the most likely group of people to cause road accidents, damaging their cars and other people’s properties as well.

Importance of getting insurance when you just have a provisional licence
Learning how to drive can be difficult. Even after learning, there still comes the need to get used to traffic signs and rules. Sometimes, it takes more time to master the road principles than learning how to drive. This increases the chances of causing accidents on the road.

As a leaner driver, insurance has to be obtained to provide solutions to problems as they arise. Statistics show that most learner drivers are aged between 17-20 years and they cause accidents about seven times more than adults around 35.

Conclusion: It is not complete to plan learning how to drive without making plans to obtain provisional licence insurance. This is because before a vehicle is allowed on the roads or street in UK, insurance for the vehicle must have been obtained. Besides, car insurance for learner drivers is very useful. It is better to be safe than sorry!

One may wonder why it is so difficult to get cheap insurance premium for learner drivers. The reason is that statistics prove that learner drivers may be a more risky proposition for the insurance companies. Statistics have shown that a new driver is more likely to be involved in an accident in the first year after passing the driving test than at any other time. Also for any given mile of driving, the risk of an accident involving injury or death is about seven times higher in the age group of 17-20 compared to the age group of 40 and above.

At the least, a third party insurance cover is required for driving any car. Normally due to high costs of driving lessons, many learners choose to take extra driving lessons in a private vehicle under the guidance of family or friends. Any learner driver taking these private lessons needs to make sure that they have appropriate insurance. In most cases, a specific learner driver’s insurance policy will more than likely be needed.

Most of the drivers expect that after passing their test, the premium on their insurance policies would be reduced. However mostly this is not the case.  A newly qualified driver is considered to be at a similar risk as a learner driver. Today many companies provide independent learner driver insurance for all types of cars. Many learners as well as their parents feel that there is no need to take an extra learner drivers’ insurance cover and a fully comprehensive car insurance policy should be suitable for their needs as it will also cover claims involving a learner driver. They could not be further from the truth.

If a learner driver wants to take lessons with his or her parents, then their car insurance company may be contacted and the person learning to drive may be added as an additional driver to the existing policy. Driving a car without insurance cover is against the law and if any such person is caught, the car may be confiscated and destroyed. Also, penalty points would be applied on the provisional license of the driver.

You may find that many car insurance companies don’t offer cheap car insurance for learners and thus may refuse to add your name to your parent’s car insurance policy. In this case it is best to get an independent learner driver insurance. This has the added benefit that should an accident happen, the claims will go through the learner’s name and so will not affect in any way the owner of the car being used for driving lessons. You will also notice that it is a short term contract rather than an annual policy and it makes more sense to top for this kind of policy which will server for the duration that you need it as a learner and not more.

Learn the Basics First

You should never learn on the job, which means you should not learn how the different controls of your car works while you are driving. You should learn the basic controls while the car is still in your garage itself or simply when the car is not moving at all. Once you get familiarised with the various functions of the different controls found in the car, like the brakes, the clutch and accelerator (gas pedal), you will feel more confident while driving the car on the road.

Besides taking driving lessons from a qualified driving instructor, it is also advisable to get learner driver insurance to have private driving practice as well so that you can learn quicker.

Obey the Traffic Rules

It simply involves following all the general rules of traffic and to try not to break them ever. Some common rules are:

• Wear a seatbelt
• Alert other drivers for what you are going to do next
• Always follow a safe distance from the vehicle ahead of you
• Never drive aggressively by keeping your car close to the bumper of another vehicle
• Do not force overtaking in unfavourable conditions

Keep an Eye on Other Drivers

Always keep an eye on the actions of other drivers and never take your eyes off from the road. If a driver is trying to overtake your car, do not speed up or impede his manoueuvre. If you do so, you could be inviting the possibility for an accident. This will also not look as a good effort on your part in the eyes of your driving examiner. Besides, you should avoid telling other drivers how to drive.

Use the Horn, when it is Necessary

It is not advised to use horn excessively, especially when you are taking your driving test. One should only use the horn to let other road users know you are there and want their attention for certain reasons, like:

• When you are trying to ask a pass for your car from another driver
• When you are trying to inform a reversing vehicle that your car is right behind it

Drive in Different Conditions and Time

If you have opportunity and time to learn your driving lessons at different times of the day and in different conditions, then you must take advantage of them. Most people use to learn their driving lessons at a particular time of a day, like either in morning or evening, which makes it almost impossible for them to adapt their driving skills to different traffic and climatic conditions. If you have never driven in night, at dusk or on wet road surfaces, you will never have a feel about how to drive your car in under conditions. So, what will you do if you come across such conditions right in the middle of your driving test? You can fail miserably, therefore it is better to have a feel of all driving conditions just to be on the safe side.

Do Take a Mock Test

Take a mock test just a day or two before taking your actual driving test. You can easily figure out your flaws while taking a mock test with a private instructor. It will also help you know how much you are independent while driving a car with a stranger.

Learner drivers who hold a provisional licence may be lucky enough to have a parent or family member willing to give them private lessons. If this is the case, then you are one of the select few who have the chance to actually do this. If someone offers their car for a provisional licence holder to drive in, the learner must really mean somthing to them. To supervise a learner driver, you must be over the age of 21 with a clean driving history of 3 years. In addition to this the leaner driver will also need to take out insurance to cover them for the car. It’s best to learn in a car with a small engine as it is found that the quote for insurance can be up to £800 less. Cars such as Toyota Aygo, Fiat Punto, Renault Clio, Ford Ka, Vauxhall Corsa or similar small engine cars are ideal for learners to drive in.

There are two different types of insurance for learner drivers; the first is to take out a new policy solely in their name. So if a learner was to make an accident, the claim would be their responsibility and they could be liable to pay for it. The owner and driver of the vehicle would not need to claim on their insurance which could then make them lose their no claims and also increase insurance premiums.

The second type of policy is to be added on the owner/driver of the vehicles existing policy. Many people do not like this option as adults who have driven for some time may benefit greatly from their good driving history and no claims bonus. This is the preferred option for getting insurance on an existing policy so the learner would be a named driver.

Learner driver insurers can insure you annually, monthly and even weekly. The best way to insure a learner driver for driving a vehicle for private tuition is monthly or weekly. It is cheaper and you don’t know when you are likely to pass your test. If you enter into an annual contract you may be forced to pay for cover when you no longer need it.