One alarming statistic from the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) has it that 16-year-olds cause 10 times as many accidents as drivers over the age of 30 years.
It is also a well-known fact that many adults have a problem trusting teenagers with their cars. So how would you expect the Insurance company to behave? After all the guiding principal in any insurance is, the higher the risk, the higher the insurance premiums.
This is why it is so difficult to get discounts or low insurance rates for teenagers. Most insurance companies will not hear of it.
Still there are things you can do to bring down the insurance cost for your teenage children to drive.
To start with, it is not all insurance companies that have this totally negative view towards teenage drivers. A little shopping around will clearly prove this to you and help you find an insurance company that will be a little more sympathetic.
One idea that has helped many parents reduce on the cost of insurance for their teenage children is by putting them on their own policies. That is rather than setting up an independent policy, they opt to have them as an additional driver on their own insurance policies. In this way, all the discounts that have been applied to the parent is passed on to the teenager.
Some parents go further and even give their kids a cash incentive to be good safe drivers. Usually having a 3.0 or higher GPA will reduce your car insurance by a whooping 10 per cent. What many adult family members do is to simply share out the savings that they get. To help their teenage children achieve this, many parents even enroll them in driver education courses. In this way they gain knowledge and skills that help them to become safer and obviously more knowledgeable drivers.