Cheap car insurance news
25/08/2010
More vehicles withdrawn from service
The inability of many drivers to find sufficiently cheap car insurance has led to more vehicles than ever being taken off the road.
According to a study by one motor insurer, 1.8 million people applied for Statutory Off Road Notifications (SORN) last year. A SORN ensures that a vehicle does not need to be MOT'd or taxed, meaning that it can be kept off public highways. Crucially, a SORN also means that drivers needn't feel the pressure to compare the market and look for cheap car insurance.
A spokesperson from the company behind the study commented, "We have noticed this year that at the time of their insurance renewal, more customers are telling us they cannot afford to keep their cars on the road. This is backed up by the increase in SORN declarations, with drivers choosing to take their vehicles off the road until their financial worries ease.
"Many of the cars declared off road in the past few years could be second cars, where households cannot afford to run multiple vehicles. There has also been a sharp rise in motorcycle SORNs, which suggests that a lot of people see their motorbikes as luxuries they cannot afford to run right now."
And it seems the shrinking cheap car insurance market is hitting both private vehicle owners and commercial vehicle owners; around 1 million of the "vehicles withdrawn from service" were privately used, while the remaining 800,000 SORNs were for commercial vehicles.