Despite whatever Jeremy Clarkson might think (he was spotted earlier this year apparently talking on his mobile whilst swanning around in his Mercedes – see below), using a mobile phone whilst driving isn’t a good idea, no matter how skilled a driver you think you are.

OK, so I know I myself can’t actually drive yet (legally, at any rate) but in the same way that you don’t have to be a fully qualified apiarist to know that smothering yourself in honey and running around in a bee farm isn’t very clever, you don’t have to have been driving for 20 years to realise that talking on your phone whilst behind the wheel isn’t sensible.

Despite a ban on using hand-held mobiles and hands free devices whilst driving has been in effect since 2003, many UK motorists still think that they can get away with it. Roughly 500 drivers were fined every day in 2006, which works out at around 168,000 for the whole year. Staggeringly, this is an increase of the figures for 2005, suggesting that drivers aren’t getting the message (no pun intended).

In a bid to reverse this trend, leading UK insurers including Allianz, Churchill and Norwich Union now require all car insurance applicants to state whether they have ever been convicted of using a phone whilst driving.

As well as having to cough up for a £60 fine and receive three points on their licences if caught, drivers will also see a rise in their car insurance premiums to the tune of around £200 – Allianz now increase basic premiums by 30% for any offences.

Mark Bishop, spokesman for Allianz, said: “We decided to raise our premiums for drivers convicted of the offence to 30% in April. We hope that other insurers will follow our lead. We need to enforce the message that this is a dangerous and needless act.”

According to the AA, the average annual car insurance is just under £700, which means convicted drivers with the company would pay out over £200 extra each year.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 8:33 am and is filed under Car Insurance, Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.