Cheap car insurance news
07/01/2011
Passengers can jeopardise cheap car insurance
Drivers may be risking having a road accident and subsequently losing their cheap car insurance if they carry drunk passengers because they can cause dangerous situations to develop.
An insurance company survey found that more than 100,000 car crashes and six times as many near misses a year could be blamed on drunk passengers.
Out of 1,048 drivers who responded to the poll, 18% said drunks they had carried had been sick, 43% had sung loudly and 32% had turned the car radio up excessively loudly. These types of actions were added to more serious ones when the steering wheel or the handbrake had been grabbed.
A spokesman for the company which commissioned the survey said drivers should be aware of the potential distraction caused by passengers coupled with winter driving conditions.
Although three-quarters of car owners quizzed said they had carried drunk passengers, it is not known how many of those had suffered a car crash because of that and then lost the benefits of cheap car insurance.