Take a break from the cheapest car insurance search and clean your car

If you, like most people, have a car that's filled with empty crisp packets, covered in dog hair, littered with discarded toys from about five years ago and enough petrol receipts to cover a house with, then perhaps you should stop searching for the cheapest car insurance and take a moment to give your car a rather belated spring clean.

Over 850 bacteria can live in just one square centimetre of your car. That's more than the average toilet seat and much more than the kitchen floor. Given that most people use their cars to transport their weekly food shopping in, these findings are pretty scary.

In a survey conducted by researchers from Aston University, one in four of the 1,376 car owners polled admitted to having cars covered in food wrappers and empty drink bottles, and one in six also admitted to leaving uneaten food in their cars. This provides the perfect breeding ground for all sorts of different bacteria as well as leading to nasty smells and odours.

Those with children and/or pets were found to have the dirtiest and most germ-ridden cars with traces of excrement found in one car where food shopping was regularly placed.

Although most of the bacteria found were harmless, MRSA a staph bacteria that can cause skin infections, was found in some of the cars tested. With all the public hysteria over MRSA found in hospitals, finding it in the car which almost every household in the country owns and uses each day should perhaps be more of a concern.

The study also found a strong correlation between cars with higher mileages and the bacterial and fungal air quality. Newer cars tested carried far less germs than older cars.

Half of the car owners questioned admitted that the standard of cleanliness in their car was a lot worse than the condition they would ever let their house reach. However over a quarter of the drivers polled also admitted eating in their cars every week.

Seeing as most people are willing to spend hours searching for the cheapest car insurance quote, it seems surprising that they won't spent a couple of minutes just taking a moment to give the inside of their cars a quick clean.

Saying that, I myself do tend to eat the odd sandwich in my car and used to be guilty of having a tin heap with an inside more akin to a builder's skip. I am even guilty of peeling and eating a banana in my car and leaving the skin to fester for a week.

However one of my colleagues takes the prize for the most impressive in-car food eating skills as he has been known to drive to work while managing to eat a bowl of cereal at the same time! Not sure what his car insurance company would say if they found out though and I certainly don't think it would help his search for the cheapest car insurance.

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