Cars - and insurance for cars - always in the headlines
Cars - and insurance for cars - are everywhere at the moment. Have you noticed? The news is filled with the latest developments in the motor industry and connected insurance business.
The coverage is indicative of the huge impact that one of our favourite wheeled mechanical beasts has on lives of people across the world. Here, Duck2water takes an insightful look at the automobile business as the economic downturn starts to bite deep into the western world.
Let's start with some good news for car buyers. They can now benefit from swingeing discounts on new models because sales are dropping at their steepest rates for the best part of two decades.
The best deals can be found on older, less popular models, according to research published in the Daily Telegraph. Because cars needed to be sold as quickly as possible, the discounts are increasing markedly.
The research revealed average discounts are now totalling almost £2000 with some new cars enjoying reductions reaching 45%.
At the same time, it may be a surprise to know that there is some good news for plenty of motorists caught up in road traffic accidents.
Latest figures from the Association of British Insurers (ABI) show that claims for whiplash are totalling almost 1,200 daily. While there can be much pain and suffering associated with whiplash, the cumulative compensation bill is reckoned to be two billion pounds annually.
Thankfully, cover provided by insurance for car drivers can take the hard work out of making claims. Legal and medical expenses are paid for by policies that have appropriate levels of car insurance cover.
The NHS bill to treat whiplash injuries costs about £8m per year - and research shows that UK motorists make more claims for whiplash injury than the motoring public in the rest of Europe. About three quarters of all personal injury claims are for whiplash.
It is a mark of the state of the world, and some people in it, how the car can be used for creating bad news as well as good. In a London court, a trial is underway in connection with car bombs used at the entrance of Scotland's Glasgow airport in June last year.
Hard to believe that National Health Service doctors - those charged with saving lives - are accused of crimes that saw a flaming jeep crashed and exploding at an airport used daily by thousands of people.
It may depend on perspectives, but beneath the bad news about the economic downturn, there appears to be good news on the back of it. Perhaps the analogy that applies here is every cloud has a silver lining.
The other major story that made the headlines this week is that the UK government may postpone Vehicle Excise Duty tax increases that were due to be introduced in April 2009.
Car tax, as it is more commonly known, was planned to rise for cars purchased from the start of 2002 until the beginning of 2006, while tax discounts of 50% were proposed for new cars.
This is expected to be good news for the motorist and the automobile industry. Motoring bosses claim that scrapping the tax changes will help sales as well as save jobs.
So that's a round-up of the latest car - and insurance for car - stories that are making the headlines in the current turbulent times. It is remarkable how the car, starting from a basic lawnmower-type engine on a go-cart more than a century ago, makes the news in such a big way day after in this modern world.
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