Irish women's safe driving habits are saving them a lot of money

Statistics show women to be more careful road users, which directly brings savings and better insurance premiums

Woman driving a car with her kids

Last week, 16 road safety fines doubled overnight. Break the speed limit and you’re now liable for a €160 fine. Use your phone and it’s €120. Fail to put on your seat belt, it’s another €120.

Getting fined is only half the story, however. If you do get caught breaking these rules, you’re going to get penalty points, and if you’ve got penalty points, you’re going to end up paying more for your car insurance.

MissQuote.ie’s Deirdre McCarthy says motorists could knock hundreds of euro a year — or as much as a third — off their car insurance bill by keeping their licence penalty-point free.

“Penalty points or driving convictions push up the cost of car insurance and make it harder to get a quote,” said Ms McCarthy. “Insurers can start to load your car insurance premium if you have three or more penalty points.”

There’s no set loading, and every company is different.

“Generally, your premium will increase by 10% if you have seven penalty points on your licence, 20% if you have eight or nine penalty points, and 30% if you have ten or 11 penalty points. A 30% loading could add €200 or €300 more a year to the cost of car insurance of a driver who was originally quoted between €700 and €900 for cover.”

And if you clock up 12 points within a three-year period, you’re automatically disqualified from driving. Ms McCarthy says when disqualified drivers get back on the road, they usually struggle to find an insurer who’ll take them on.

Recent statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) reveal men were issued with 118,413 penalty point endorsement notices in 2020, compared to 59,502 for women.

Drill down into those figures and you’ll find even more compelling evidence that women are more careful drivers.

Men were issued with four times as many penalty points for failing to wear a seatbelt. Men were three times as likely as women to get penalty points for using their phone while driving.

Ms McCarthy says that the penalty point figures tie in with consistent findings over the years that men pose a greater risk to themselves and other road users than women.

Men are three times more likely than women to get penalty points for breaking overtaking rules and twice as likely as women to get penalty points for speeding or driving an unroadworthy car.

Some 2,269 of the penalty point notices issued for using a vehicle without a valid NCT were to men, compared to 1,097 for women.

Ms McCarthy urged women to hold onto their safe driving habits.

“Because of the safety benefits first and foremost, and also due to the savings up for grabs by doing so,” she says.

Avoiding penalty points is just one way to keep premiums down of course.

Men are twice as likely as women to get penalty points for speeding.

Before you renew, always double check exactly who is named on the policy. Forgetting to take a younger driver off a policy can mean paying over the odds by €500 or more.

In some instances, actually adding a named driver can make your premium cheaper.

Some insurers assume that if you add a partner with whom you live, then you are in a stable relationship and will be less likely to claim.

The number of years of no claims bonus is also important. A person with only one year’s NCB may only have been offered quotes from three or four insurers originally, but 12 months on, quite a few more will offer terms, which could result in savings of anywhere between €300 - €400. Most brokers will automatically run you through the system again to see what’s available.

Drivers dealing directly with an insurer may fail to contact insurers that declined to quote last year. Make sure you do.

Your occupation also plays a critical role in determining what you pay. If you have changed job or role over the course of the year, then you might find that ticking a new box in the occupation dropdown will have a positive (or negative) effect on premiums.

The location at which the car is usually kept is sometimes factored into premium calculations. Also, whether or not your car is stored in a garage may be considered.

If it is, some insurers will see this as lowering its security risk and may adjust the premium accordingly.

It’s often the case that young drivers, when starting out, find that comprehensive cover is prohibitively expensive and settle for third party, fire and theft (TPFT) instead.

However, in some cases, once an NCB is earned in the year, the difference between comprehensive and TPFT narrows significantly and many motorists are able to upgrade their cover at an affordable rate.

Note too that not all insurers price the same car in the same way.

All have different risk portfolios, and just because one insurer charges a high premium doesn’t mean that they all will.

Of course, many of the things which influence insurance premiums are out of your control.

All the general factors that impact premiums (car type, age of insured, location of the car etc.) are reviewed periodically by insurers and many will change their pricing structures for each. The same goes for insurers’ attitude to risk. This can change frequently and will vary too from insurer to insurer. The only way to get a firm handle on it is to ring around or talk to a broker you trust.

As a car decreases in value so too should the sum-insured. And of course, one certainty is that everybody will be a year older at their renewal date. This can have a big impact, particularly for younger drivers. An insurer that would not quote you when you were 20 may be happy to do so at 21.

It’s important to remember that if you own a car, you must own car insurance. It’s against the law to drive a car without it. Despite this, the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland estimates that one in every 13 private vehicles in the country is uninsured. These drivers are playing a dangerous game.

If you get caught driving without car insurance, it’s a mandatory court appearance, up to five penalty points on your licence and a fine of up to €5,000. In addition, you could receive a driving ban for four or more years. And in some cases, drivers have faced a six-month jail term. So while you can economise on car insurance, you can’t skip it altogether.