Curiosity is going to kill this cat one day, I’m sure of it. Or at the very least, get me sucked into my monitor.
After going eyeball deep in a UK mortgage site, I thought, “Let me see what, if anything is different about car insurance over there.” I found this site Cheap Car Insurance.
Oh boy.
The first thing I noticed is all this talk about whether your car is imported, or not. At first, I thought, “What’s the big fuss? We have imported cars here…I’ve even owned a couple in my lifetime.” But this is not what they’re talking about. I have never gone to the UK and purchased a car and tried to bring it here to drive it. It finally dawns on me that we’re dealing with an area of the world in which several countries will fit into the square miles that make up the 48 States I’m used to wandering around. So, of course imported cars are going to be more of an issue to deal with there…duh.
See? Because I’ve never been abroad, look how limited my thinking and perspective is. Some things just don’t occur to me, and why would they? Being able to get parts for my imported car was never a problem for me, but with this perspective, I can definitely see why an insurance company might be hesitant to insure my imported car, simply because if I crack it up and the only available parts are half-way around the world, that’s gonna be a whole lot more expensive for them than fixing a domestic car.
The other major thing I noticed is something the UK does better than us (in my opinion) and that is they have three kinds of coverage:
- Third Party Only cover – this is analogous to our liability only coverage.
- Comprehensive cover – this is analogous to our comprehensive/collision coverage.
- Third Party Fire and Theft cover – This covers third party risks as described above plus the risk of fire and theft in connection with your vehicle in accordance with relevant policy terms.
I think that 3rd option is great. I mean, if you’re a good driver, and your car is older, it might not make sense to pay for comprehensive coverage, but you might still want coverage for it getting stolen or burnt up.
So, while I might not be all that keen to buy a house over there, insuring a car might not be all that bad. LOL
