Young drivers “priced off the roads” as car insurance for 17-year-olds hits £3,500

Young drivers are being faced with sky-high insurance premiums. Rising prices mean that 17-year-olds are now being quoted, on average, as much as £3,500 per year for car insurance.

That’s a 77 per cent rise year-on-year for the youngest cohort of new drivers, according to price comparison site Quotezone. It also brings the average cost of covering a teenage driver to around the £3,000 mark – over £2,000 more than the average premium for older drivers.

Things aren’t that much easier for older teens, either, with 19 year-olds being quoted an average of £2,435 per year for car insurance. These steep rises are well above what is being seen for the rest of the population, with the average cost for cover rising by 34 percent last year, according to the Association for British Insurers (ABI).

Quotezone’s CEO Gregg Wilson said that such high premiums mean that young drivers “are being priced off the roads.”

“Learning to drive comes with a lot of costs, including driving lessons, tests, tax and insurance,” he explained. “As the average insurance price for 17-19 year-olds now approaches £3,000 at the start of the year, many are unable to afford getting behind the wheel after passing their test.”

As alluded to earlier, it’s not just young people feeling the pinch when it comes to insurance costs, either; earlier this year, Citizens Advice told the government’s Treasury Select Committee that some people are faced with the “impossible choice of whether to pay for their car insurance or put food on the table”.

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