Adding A Teen Driver: Will It Affect Your Car Insurance Rates?
Before selecting your current car insurance coverage, you most likely invested a significant amount of your valuable time in researching different companies in order to get the best car insurance quotes. Your clean driving record helped you secure a great car insurance policy at a reasonable price. But now, the moment that you have been dreading for the last couple years of your life is here and you hope it will not throw a wrench into things: Your teenager is ready to get behind the wheel and hit the road with the wheels spinning. Now that you have an additional (and inexperienced) driver being added to your policy, do you need to brace yourself for the financial impact on your pocketbook?
Adding any driver-and much more a statistically high-risk teenage driver- to your car insurance policy is going to make rates go up. Let’s look at exactly what factors are taken into consideration in raising rates when a new driver is added. Simply put, the younger the driver the higher the risk. Likewise, the more you will have to pay on your premiums. Insurers are very aware that driving related accidents are the principal cause of death in the U.S. for young adults under the age of 20 and have no problem in raising your premium as much as twice its current rate. Insurers are protecting themselves against the risk of new drivers on the road, which are the most costly group to insure. An increase in your car insurance policy upon adding a teen is inevitable, but there is a way to control this increase. Even though all new drivers are considered to be at high risk for accidents causing injury and death, if you can prove your teenage driver is responsible, you can save considerably.
Let’s take a look at some handy tips on how to keep the increase to a minimum. If your teenage driver is a good student, he or she may be eligible for a discount as high as 25 %. All you have to do is send an official report card or transcript to your insurance company that shows your teenage driver is at least getting a 3.0 grade point average. You may want to even make it a household rule that if grades don’t stay in the “high enough for discount” range, driving privileges are temporarily revoked. It is advisable that you teach your teen the importance of following traffic laws, as any infraction or speeding violation will make prices jump even more.
