Disclaimer: The contents below are not to be taken as financial or legal advice. Readers are responsible for their own actions.
Getting started with driving a motor vehicle in the UK encompasses many elements which may not be immediately familiar (or, in some cases, contradictory to experience) to persons who newly arrive in the country. This is in contrast to native youngsters who usually in their lives have seen how the ownership of a car functions in the family or circle of friends. The author purchased a car after his third year in the country, and, at this point in time, after having the car for one year and having gone through numerous pitfalls, this article is written to share the experiences from his perspective to help the reader get started.
Driving licence
If you do not have a driving licence, or do not know how to drive a motor vehicle, follow the standard process of learning to drive in the UK and obtain your UK driving licence. If you have a driving licence issued in some countries / regions, it is possible to convert to a UK licence upon arrival. If you hold a driving licence that is not convertible to a UK licence, it may be the case that you can drive legally in the UK for up to 1 year, after which you need to obtain a UK licence by taking the test as a learner.
Whichever case applies to you, getting the UK licence at the earliest possibility is highly advisable, and this is for two reasons:
- If you obtain a licence by taking the test as a learner, the new drivers’ probation period rules apply to you. The rule states that, in a period of two years, if you get six or more (including six) endorsement points, your newly obtained licence will be revoked, as if it was never issued. This is in contrast to the treatment of more experienced drivers where they can be disqualified for a fixed period. The most minor offence in the UK (e.g. speeding by a small amount) will lead to a three point endorsement, so only one instance is tolerated in two years. Using a mobile phone while driving attracts six points, which, for a probationary driver, means instant loss of the licence. This is considered to be considerably more stringent than a lot of countries and regions. By obtaining the licence early, you can let this probationary period pass without driving, which reduces the risk of licence being revoked.
- When buying insurance, the amount of time that you have held the licence that you use to buy the insurance is a critical factor in determining the premium. You could have held some other driving licence for a long time, but it is the time that the UK licence is held (assuming you use the UK licence to buy insurance, some insurers accept foreign licences provided they qualify you to drive in the UK) will be asked by the insurer, to within a month if less than three years. Obtaining the licence early allows you to build up this time.
However, if you obtain your licence and do not drive for a long time, it is advisable to have some practice before buying your own car and driving independently.
Buying a car
Assuming that you are on an economic budget, the sum of the following items of expense needs to be calculated, and it is very likely that you will face trade-offs between these factors when you determine what a car to buy:
- Cost of the car, where the general rule of the market applies.
- Cost to tax the car. Road tax is payable every year, and the amount depends on the CO2 emission of the car. Diesel vehicles usually have lower tax rates than petrol vehicles.
- Cost to insure the car. Small, cheap, less powerful cars are usually inexpensive to insure. Being very powerful will greatly increase the insurance premium or, in some cases, causing the insurers refusing to quote, especially the models which are usually linked to reckless teenage driving (‘hot hatches’, e.g. Golf GTI, Fiesta ST). Very old cars can cost more to insure because they may not be up to the most recent safety standards. Almost any modification will result in big troubles in insurance except a few, so the rule of thumb is to not buy a modified car.
- Cost to potentially repair the car, if buying a second hand car. This cost is best avoided, but it may be significant if problems do arise. In this regard, steer clear of cheap, old, luxury models (‘the most expensive car is a cheap Mercedes’).
- Cost of fuel.
- Cost to replace the car. This will be the case if the car’s condition does not suggest that it will pass the next MOT, which are annual safety inspections that must be passed for the car to be road legal. MOT rules can change rapidly, and the most recent change introduced very strict rules on diesel vehicle emission, where any visible smoke is unacceptable. Thus, if you are thinking about buying a diesel car which is burning oil, for example, you need to be aware that its life is limited.
It is a good idea to obtain an insurance quote before buying the car, as there are certain combinations of driver and car that insurers are reluctant to quote on.
You need to make sure of the following before the car can be taken onto the road:
- The car has a valid MOT certificate.
- The car is taxed. Road tax is not transferable, so you need to tax the car before leaving the dealership. Fortunately this can be done on a mobile phone.
- You are insured to drive the car. You can either arrange the long term insurance before going and buying the car, or buy some temporary insurance just for taking the car home.
Motor insurance
Motor insurance can cost astronomical figures (easily up to £6000 per year) for young, inexperienced drivers. Many other factors, such as the car, your address, driving history, etc. influence the cost greatly. Quite very unfortunately, drivers below the age of 25 are unlikely to see their policies go below £500 per year without other mechanisms of discounting (e.g. telematics, bundle insurance with family, having other experienced driver on policy, etc.).
There is incentive to provide false information to get low insurance premium, but this constitutes the crime of fraud, and renders the insurance policy void. You are strongly advised to be completely honest in the supply of information when attempting to obtain an insurance quote.
If this is the first time you drive in the UK, matters will be simple because you will have:
- No previous claims
- No previous accidents
- No NCB (no claims bonus)
- No history of insurance being cancelled or voided
- No motoring offence
Answer the rest of the questions honestly to obtain an insurance quote.
On tryout quotes
You may want to obtain a tryout quote to determine whether you can afford to insure a particular car, for example. You should not use any real person’s profile for this purpose. Insurance companies record all the information used for quotation purposes, and they seem to realise if a certain person (e.g. by name / DOB combination) is getting many quotes using conflicting information across short intervals, which is apparently fraudulent or attempting to reverse engineer their pricing algorithm. In response, they either raise the price (easily by more than 200%) or refuse to quote the particular profile anymore online.
On telematic insurance
Telematic policies (or black box policies) will usually be cheaper than conventional policies. The insurance companies require you to have an electronic device fitted to your car (which contains a GPS receiver and an accelerometer) so they can track your location and measure the smoothness of your driving. If your driving is considered as good in their standards, a marginal discount in premium may be available. The author is strongly against such policies due to the following reasons:
- You need to pay an installation fee (or a similar fee under a different name) which can be as high as £150. When the policy ends, you may be again required to pay a removal fee.
- Your location is tracked, which is not preferable for privacy. But on the other hand, having a tracking device onboard can help in the event of vehicle theft.
- The insurer has the right to cancel your policy if your driving, by their metrics, is poor. Reportedly this only takes a couple of days of difficult driving (e.g. poor weather or poor road conditions). Having an insurance policy cancelled needs to be declared every time you obtain an insurance quote in the future (non-disclosure is a form of fraud) and increases premium significantly. Moreover, most black box policy providers refuse to insure those who have been cancelled by other black box providers before due to poor driving. It is by cancelling the poor drivers early on do the insurers save on claim payouts to allow them to offer a cheaper price.
- The device has a chance of malfunctioning, due to a defective installation or otherwise, and it can send wrong data to the insurer, suggesting that your driving is poorer than it really is.
On using comparison websites
Comparison websites need to be used with great care, due to the following reasons:
- Every time you run a comparison, your request is sent to every insurer the website has access to, and, thus, it is very easy to get into problems with everybody all at once if you are using real profiles to tryout quotes, or you entered some wrong information and need to correct it.
- The information insurers ask for can be different from company to company, while the comparison websites use generic forms which may miss some fields for some insurers. Thus, the quotes are not necessarily accurate until you go to the insurer and fill in the form in detail. The author has experienced huge price hikes caused by this (the price increases every time the quote is adjusted marginally and run again, as a measure to prevent reverse engineering).
- The comparison websites save your data on file, and when it comes to renewal, they can obtain quotes for you (without your explicit consent) using the data you provided LAST year. This is very risky, as your profile is the real one, but some information can be very different (e.g. you got a job) and you need to correct this. Insurers are likely to get these conflicting quote requests in short succession. Imagine an insurance company sees this person saying he’s a student living on campus on Monday, and then saying he’s some company employee living in London on Tuesday. There is a high chance that your profile will be blacklisted.
Besides, the comparison websites tend to attract only the smaller insurers (apart from Admiral group). The two mainstream insurers in the UK, Aviva and DirectLine, are not on comparison sites.
A note on fronting
‘Fronting’ is where an experienced driver insures the car as the main driver, while naming an inexperienced driver on the policy, who is the main driver de facto. It is a crime of fraud, and renders the policy void (never existed from the beginning) when the insurer finds out. Nevertheless, the insurer needs to prove that the inexperienced driver is actually the main driver which may not be easy. Reportedly these days the insurers use algorithms to spot such patterns and quote very high premiums.