June 23, 2010

Older Drivers And Two Reasons Their Auto Insurance Quotes May Increase

Getting older is not very easy. There are challenges in health and income alike. It makes it equally hard when car insurance rates go up. When obtaining your free auto insurance quotes, you may see that rates for older drivers are higher and wonder why they would charge someone with so many experienced years of driving a higher rate. The answer is actually two fold.

If we look at the issue of older people and the increase in their car insurance we can see that while it doesn't always seem fair to make someone on a fixed income with years of road experience pay more for insurance, it surely does make business sense.

You must understand that a car company does not judge everything on a case by case basis. Certainly, they take into account things such as driving record, as well as discountable items such as good student discounts and having a car equipped with a car alarm. All these things make for a lower driving rate, but in the case of older people, the insurance company must look at them as a whole.

While you may know many people in their seventies and eighties who are spry and very much capable of driving well without an accident, you must remember the other side of it as well. There are many people in their elder years that have diminished reflexes and have lost a great deal of their hand-eye coordination. This is just an unfortunate fact of life. We see these older drivers that are no longer as good as they once were. This, unfortunately, makes it very difficult for them to drive well and keep up with the demands of very serious and fast paced driving.

So, insurance companies must assume that most elderly drivers have diminished driving skills and therefore present a greater liability on the road. This is not to be unfair but simply to protect the company from having their older clients underpay for coverage.

The other reasons that drivers end up seeing their free auto insurance quotes go up in their later years is that their vision begins to fail them. Many people begin to develop diminished eye sight in their early twenties, but as they get older their sight begins to fail them more and more. Vision is the singular most important part of driving. When drivers get older and their sight begins to fail them, this makes for a very difficult situation and makes them a liability.

Being older is not always easy, but as an older driver you must understand the reasons why your car insurance company may want to charge you more money. It is certainly not personal.