Hi, as someone who has come to driving late in life, i'm dismayed to find the number of friends i have who are finding that getting themselves on the road with thier Full licence (which they already have) it just too damn expensive. Sure, in the present ecenomic climate they are working part-time, but with the cost of car tax, insurance, petrol and the general upkeep of a motorcar (Mini or otherwise) they simply can't get on the road and are instead putting themselves onto the isnurance of thier wives or girlfriends.

How do other people find it with new drivers that want to get on the road but find it financially unviable?

I would say the cost of fuel is a big issue for some these days , i myself am lucky enough that myself and my partner work close to our home , i am just a short bus journey and she is just a short walk, our mini is only used for those fun drives :) we do make sure to give her a good run at least once a week to keep her in top condition under the bonnet.

I work with a few young guys that are actually not even going to sit the test as they simply can't afford the car because of insurance , tax , fuel.

I must admit though i am sick to death of people saying modern cars get great MPG!! yeah we all know that but not everyone can afford to go buy a modern car and also some don't actually want that kind of expense with the way the current climate is.

I truely feel sorry for younger drivers these days , yes even when i was young insurance was expensive but the most i heard then was £1100 per year , now you hear quotes of £2500!! its just insane. As i mentioned in a previous post there is no other true sense of freedom as being able to just get in and go! I can hear some saying , buy a pedal bike! lol

I agree with you on the modern cars being fuel efficient front. Between my current MCS and my previous I had a Smart Roadster. It was fairly good on fuel, 54mpg on average, and tax was cheap but it cost more to insure than my MCS and required a service every 7000 miles, which quickly made it expensive to run. I can't imagine how much it would cost a younger driver to insure. It was also quite unreliable and repair costs were expensive being a Mercedes dealer job.

You can pick up Peugeot 107's relatively cheap and with good insurance deals for young drivers, but to get into the car market and onto the insurance ladder you pay the price of having a pretty dreadful car for quite a while.

Young drivers though are the most likely to have accidents and it is only fair they pay more. Anyone with a child, especially a son from around 8 years old onwards, will tell you they are so sure of themselves that to tell them they are doing something wrong or even about to break the laws of physics is a waste of time. Thats not too bad when all they are doing is riding a bike or scooter, but put them in a car and you're just counting down time until they think they are Lewis Hamilton, but in reality are more like Pastor Maldonado.

Cost me £6 to go 8 miles on the bus a few weeks ago, so thats not a cheap way of going about either, and you get wet waiting for the thing to turn up.
Wont do it again, Id rather go in the car, at least folk arent coughing and sneezing right behind you, oh and youre not listening to someone elses life history on their mobile for the entire journey either.

I suppose i did not take into account that in some areas taking the bus might not actually be a safe option :( also if your in a remote area then a car is an absolute must just for your basic essentials.

I honestly can't imagine having to decide to fuel the car or put food on the table, Need to work but can't afford to get there or by the time you take off your fuel its pointless going at all.

Did any of you read about all the millions BP lost due to the oil spill? don't worry though , they still managed to make a profit :angry:

Even a 1 year season ticket from my home to London is £2000, taking the distance traveled if would be cheaper to drive, although much more hassle. Although I'd get a seat, listen to my own music, and have plenty of room if I drove. I also wouldn't randomly cancel my "service" for no reason and I wouldn't be paying for journeys I wouldn't take like bank holidays, vacation etc.

There have been a couple of reports on this topic with regard to young drivers recently:

Young driver news - Road users feeling the strain of motoring costs
A 2011 census undertaken by a car insurance company has revealed that the increasing cost of owning and driving a vehicle is pricing people off the roads and could also lead to them committing crimes in order to retain use of their car.
Reportedly, one in thirteen motorists, likely to include buyers of young driver car insurance, have had to stop driving due to being unable to afford the cost.
Insurance news - Buyers of young driver car insurance feeling price strain | insurethebox (http://www.insurethebox.com/news/young-driver-car-insurance-census-for-2011)

Big drop in number of young people choosing to drive
There's been a big drop in the number of young people choosing to drive.
Figures seen by Newsbeat show the number of 17 to 22-year-olds taking their driving test has fallen by 19% since 2005, a drop of more than 200,000 people.
Much of the decrease has been put down to an increase in the cost of learning and then running a car.
Some of the prices have risen slightly. Some, like car insurance, have rocketed.
BBC - Newsbeat - Big drop in number of young people choosing to drive (http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/14392512)

Fewer young people learning to drive - Autoblog UK (http://uk.autoblog.com/2011/08/04/fewer-young-people-learning-to-drive/)

One thing we all here all the time is young drivers SHOULD be charged more, do the people that say this not remember what it was like when they first passed? Why do we blame so much nowadays on the young?! Would it not be best to at least give them a chance? Maybe lower insurance with a warning of much higher insurance should the worst happen at their fault? Maybe this would at least stop some of the young uninsured drivers not because they are bad but just because they simply can't afford it!

Harvey, lowering the cost of insurance to the young with a warning about heavily raised insurance cost is a smart idea, but unfortunately the government has an illegal loophole they haven't closed. I had a friend who was an excellent driver and who hadn't had an accident for more than 15 years, and he was hacked off that his insurance premium had gone up regardless. He cancelled his policy and drove about for 3 months before the government suggested to him that there was a chance he may not be insured. The point was the government didn't know for sure whether Dave was insured or not. Until some form of database is set up at the DVLA that has a defacto register of all motorists insurance policies, people will keep getting insured, taxed, and then cancel the policy, hoping they don't get nailed for it.

Maybe lower insurance with a warning of much higher insurance should the worst happen at their fault?
Are you suggesting that you would be happy to pay a higher premium for your insurance so that the extra money could be used to subsidise the insurance of all/most young drivers?

Or is there another pot of money that is just sitting there, waiting to get used for this purpose?

Young drivers, as a group, have more accidents - that's just statistics. So young drivers, as a group, get charged higher premiums. If you know how to pick which young drivers won't have accidents, tell the insurance companies as they would love to know.

The data I've seen says that young men do not have many more accidents than the average driver during the hours of daylight - it's the night-time where they do really, really badly. So the insurance companies offering cheaper policies with night-time driving curfews are responding sensibly to the accident data.

Until some form of database is set up at the DVLA that has a defacto register of all motorists insurance policies, people will keep getting insured, taxed, and then cancel the policy, hoping they don't get nailed for it.

I believe uninsured driver numbers have dropped since the setting up of the 'Motor Insurance Database' which allows Police patrol cars to do instant checks and be automatically alerted by an uninsured cars passing their front and rear facing onboard ANPR cameras.

The public can also check the insurance database online for a small fee here:
askMID (http://www.askmid.com/)

"The law on motor insurance has changed. If you own a vehicle that is not declared "off the road" (SORN) and it is registered in your name then it must be insured at all times. If you don't want to use the vehicle, then you must contact the DVLA to declare the vehicle "off road". There are penalties for not having a valid insurance policy, and if your policy does not appear on the Motor Insurance Database (MID) you can expect to receive a warning letter in the post, followed by a fixed penalty fine."

@angib , I was just saying that I feel sorry for younger drivers these days , obviously you can't judge which person will be the better driver but is the answer really to treat them all the same? Is that really the best we can come up with? Anyway in the bigger picture the government want more drivers off the road and to use public transport.

In repsonce to mab01uk , I have also heard this , If you own Vehicle , even if it's off road then it must be insured unless declared sorn, basically it's so they can build a new data base of car owners, insured or uninsured.

Just like your mot and tax it's easy for police to check your vehicle for insurance by road side scanning, how efficient this is for insurance at the moment I do not know but it's very effective for tax and mot.

Like most I have no respect for people that don't pay car insurance as we all have to , just like our council tax but that's for another forum! Lol

Just like your mot and tax it's easy for police to check your vehicle for insurance by road side scanning, how efficient this is for insurance at the moment I do not know but it's very effective for tax and mot.

Like most I have no respect for people that don't pay car insurance as we all have to , just like our council tax but that's for another forum! Lol

Harvey, i'm more than happy with the £50 per month i pay to Admiral for my car insurance, it's a price i'm quite happy to pay, same with my Car Tax. I knew going into it exactly how much the cost was based on the Cooper's engine size. As for my friend who dodged insurance for a month, it was done as a protest against insurance companies, who he felt are basically a law unto themselves. Insurance companies should not be able to put up a person's premium unless they have changed vehicle or have needed to make a claim. :cool:

If that's the case they would just set the bar high...

In any case, driving is expensive but so is public transport. It actually costs me almost £1 a day less to drive than take the bus to work ( ignoring depreciation costs, tax, insurance etc... They're not relevant).

All I would say is if costs are an issue ... Choose the right car. There are plenty of cars out there that pay no road tax, don't really use much petrol and dont cost much to buy. Only trade of is they suck to drive :)

They seem to find the money to add all kinds of body kits, new wheels, lowered suspension and noisy exhausts - probably without their insurance companies knowing (would that technically mean their insurance is invalid and hence illegal??).
None of them drive economically, they sit waiting outside shops / mates houses with the engines running. Hardly helping themselves are they. The days of cheap fuel / motoring are gone unless you have nothing else to spend it on.
I reckon the zero road tax cars are well beyond a young beginners budget.
Hang on - a new Dooper pays no road tax and a DS only 20 - they hardly 'suck to drive'!!

Haha I think I perhaps over generalised a bit... Had in mind a Citroen c1 when iwas writing that!