Car insurance - Tips & Advice - Green driving
Recent research by Direct Line shows that more young people are sharing the cost of buying a car with friends in answer to the rising cost of vehicles and environmental worries. Car sharing – where two or more people share the same journey as opposed to using separate cars – is also on the increase. Here’s how such moves could benefit you…
The concept of car sharing has been around for some time, but with growing awareness about the pollution caused by cars and its effect on the environment, the number of car-sharing schemes and active participants across the world has substantially increased.
Green campaign group Friends of the Earth reports that countries such as Switzerland are still ahead of the game in terms of car sharing take-up, but the UK is following suite. Car clubs are springing up around the country and these are being given an extra boost by government-led cash incentives, such as a recent donation from Transport for London of £300,000 to car pools in the capital.
Why car share?
In short, you’d save money and help save the environment. Friends of the Earth outlines the main benefits that car sharing can bring as:
- Reduced costs to the car owner
- Reduced congestion and pollution, and
- Improved access in areas with limited public transport.
With a 60% increase in traffic since 1980, cars being branded as the biggest source of greenhouse emissions and 10 million empty seats on our roads every year, the more people who car share, the more considerable the benefits would be. Indeed, the research shows that if the average UK car occupancy of 1.58 persons were to increase by half to 2.37 persons, it would lead to a one-third fall in traffic. So, share your car journey to work with two other people and you’d be helping to meet this target.
Of course, sharing a car journey also makes economic sense, with savings on fuel and a reduction in mileage – a figure that can affect other things, such as your car insurance premium. You’ll also help cut road congestion and, let’s face it, sometimes it might be quite nice not to drive in all that traffic every day!
How do I car share?
Liftshare is one such company that offers a car-sharing service to which you can sign up. In January 2007, its car-share network boasted more than 150,000 members with more than 50,000 people registering the preceding year. So, if you need to drive from your home in Hastings to your office in Brighton every day, it’s looking more likely that there will be someone registered who wants to do the same.
Companies such as Car Share provide a directory of car-sharing sites in the UK. Local councils run some listed networks, and going local means you might have more of a chance of finding other drivers who want to share a journey near you.
What about co-buying a car?
A recent Direct Line survey also pointed to a trend for co-buying a car as a way to save money and the environment. Our research shows that with the cost of running a car totalling £2,000 a year for first-time car owners, more than 1 in 10 young drivers are teaming up with a friend or family member to buy a vehicle. More than one in five of the 18 to 29-year-old drivers questioned would consider sharing a car and its subsequent costs, with vehicle emissions cited as a growing worry for nearly everyone interviewed.
Please note that Direct Line cannot insure co-bought cars in all instances. Direct Line can provide car insurance when the purchasers are a spouse or partner and the car should only be registered in one person’s name. In these cases, the other purchaser would still be eligible to build up their own no-claims discount as a named-driver on the policy, which would be applied on any future Direct Line car insurance policy taken out in their name.
Sharing a car is also par for the course in many families, where children learn to drive in a parent’s car and continue to use this vehicle while they save up for their own motor. As well as the cost of buying a car, this can also help save on vital costs such as road tax, car insurance and breakdown cover.
Direct Line can also help co-buying and car-sharing customers to make further savings on these costs with our New Improved Car Insurance. This includes a Named Driver No-Claims Discount where any named drivers get to build up a no-claims discount record that can eventually be transferred to a Direct line car insurance policy of their own.
Our further tips on eco-friendly driving and cutting down driving costs give further details on how you could be driving more economically and.
To find out how much you could be saving on your car insurance with Direct Line apply for a car insurance quote now. Buy our car insurance online today and you’ll also get an instant discount.
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