nizzanz1 said:
in the uk comprehensive means if you damage your own car you get compensated. if you dont have it you dont get a penny if you damage it, but you are still insured to drive.
i cant believe your system allows drivers on the road that they can legally not be covered 3rd party. what happens if an unemployed driver with a £50 banger writes off a ferrari? he could probably only contribute £50 or so to compensate the ferrari owner. strange..
3rd party is compulsary and paid with rego.
If I paid my rego, and nothing else I would just have compulsary 3rd party insurance. Which really only covers injury to people, and not much else as far as i know. So if i hit a ferrari and caused $10,000 worth of damage, ferrari driver's insurance company would bend me over backwards to get the money out of me. Plus I'd have to pay for the repairs to my own car.
The next step up is 3rd party fire/theft. Which still doesnt cover you if you run into a light pole or another car and cause damage. IT will however cover you if your car catches fire (and its not your fault) or someone steals it. This is the most common type of insurance taken out by young drivers here because its fairly cheap.
There are sometimes a few grades in between 3rd party fire/theft and fully comprehensive. Depends on the insurance company, type of car you drive, and who you are. Some of these are like enthusiast insurance companies who don't mind if you race your car. basically they cover you while on the road and turn a blind eye to you on the track. if you screw up and crash the car on the track, they wont cover you but your insurance won't be void. If i were to take my micra racing tomorrow night and I crashed on the track, I wouldn't be covered by insurance. Plus if my insurance company found out, my policy would be void. There's a few drawbacks to cheap coverage...
I refuse to drive a vehicle unless it is comprehensively insured. Its a fair bit more expensive over the other options available, but damn its worth the piece of mind. If i crash, instead of paying thousands upon thousands for the repair i simply pay my excess of $650 and the car gets repaired. Yay.
To give you an idea about how cheap it is to run the micra in the state I live...
around $550AUD a year for registration (gets more expensive the more cylinders you have in your car)
around $1.39AUD per Litre of 98ron petrol
around $750AUD per year for fully comprehensive insurance for me (thank goodness for family bundle discounts - otherwise i'd be paying in excess of $1300AUD per year for the same coverage)
Don't need to go in for yearly checks or anything like that... This will change soon though. Too many piles of #### on the roads. Other states in australia have yearly inspections like your MOT's.
*hugs micra*
