Motorists tempted to drive home after a party would do well to remember that apart from the potential for taking innocent lives, they may well find themselves uninsurable or at best facing a hefty increase in their insurance premium.

According to recent research by moneysupermarket.com, many of the UK’s insurers such as esure, Sheila’s Wheels, and the Halifax will not provide insurance to those who have been convicted in the past of drink driving offences.

Others, such as Kwikfit and Budget, will provide cover but at a price. Premiums are likely to increase on average by 82% but in some instances could go up by over 100%.

Andy Leadbetter of moneysupermarket.com advises all party-goers to make suitable arrangements for getting home after drinking. Alcohol has an adverse effect on reaction times, overall judgment, and co-ordination and yet over 40% of drivers surveyed by ROSPA admit to driving after having a drink.

An alarming one in eight admits to having driven despite the fact they thought they were over the limit. If found to be over the legal limit, drivers face a fine of up to £1000, a 12 month driving ban, and a possible custodial sentence.

In the UK you can have up to 80mg of alcohol per 100ml blood without being over the limit but it is notoriously difficult to judge how much that equates to in terms of drinks. Much depends on your weight, sex, age, whether you have eaten, whether you are on medication, and what you are drinking. All in all, it makes sense not to take the risk at Christmas or at any other time of the year! Every year 500,000 breath tests are carried out and 100,000 of these are found to be positive.

As any parent will tell you, the cost of getting your teenager driving is phenomenal and it isn’t just the cost of lessons and taking the test that sends the bank balance into the red.

The cost of insuring a car for a young and inexperienced driver has always been steep, especially if your offspring is male. However, it has now been revealed by research carried out by Co-operative Insurance, that the increase in premiums for this group of drivers amounted in 2008 to four times the rate of inflation (premiums went up by 11.5% compared to an inflation rate of 3.1%).

The average cost of insurance for a driver under the age of 25 is now £1,463 and for newly qualified drivers with no no-claims bonus this figure will be considerably higher. The Co-operative Insurance company is now concerned that we will find ourselves with a generation of uninsurable drivers and the worry is that this will mean many more drivers taking to the road uninsured. Already it is estimated that one in twenty drivers does not have insurance and this costs the industry around £500 million a year.

The good news is that Co-operative Insurance has introduced “black box” technology which will help reduce young drivers’ premiums. The technology will be fitted in the car free of charge and will analyse by GPS the usage of the vehicle and the associated risks.

It will be able to tell when, where and how far a car is driven, and decide how much of this falls into low, medium and high risk categories, allowing the driver to pay according to the actual risk incurred. In order to qualify, the driver must answer a questionnaire online on topics such as drink driving, speeding and other risky practices.

It seems that we would do well to take with a pinch of salt the claims made in slick advertising campaigns by some of the specialist motor insurance companies. It makes perfect sense that a company catering, for example, solely for women drivers should give us females the best deal, since we, after all, are statistically a better safety risk than men.

According, however, to recent research carried out by moneysupermarket.com, the specialists are not always able to give the best value. The price comparison site took an example of a female, aged 30, driving a Ford Focus and compared the deals available through specialist women-only insurers and general car insurers.

They found that the premium with the specialist insurer was on average likely to be sixty percent higher (£622 as opposed to £388). Furthermore, the price comparison site received a quote of £780 from Diamond. This figure is just over double the amount charged by a general motor insurer. Companies which cater solely for women do in fairness offer things like handbag cover, women-friendly garages, counselling, and so on but at a price which not many of us would deem worth paying.

Older drivers should also shop around before making a purchase: a 60 year old, driving the same Ford Focus, is likely to pay over the odds – 80% more to be precise – with a specialist over-60s insurer (£431 as compared to £234). In one particular instance, moneysupermarket.com found that the specialist would charge almost one and a half times as much as the general insurer.

At a time when we are all doing our best to save money, it certainly seems to be worth shopping around before deciding where to place your business.

With the UK officially in recession, the threat of redundancy is one which hangs over a large number of workers. How many of these individuals, however, realise that being unemployed can not only affect your bank balance, lifestyle, and confidence but also your car insurance premium?

It seems that insurance companies deem people who are out of work to be a far greater risk than if they were in a regular nine to five job, possibly because they are likely to be at the wheel of the car far more than when sitting behind their desk. The average uplift in premium is 20% or £137.77 and, with unemployment in the UK currently standing at 1.9 million, this means that drivers will be forking out an extra £16.4 million in premiums.

A spokesman for uSwitch.com describes the increase as “adding insult to injury” for drivers who may have “maintained an impeccable driving record in the past”. He suggests that drivers who are worried about the potential increase should they lose their jobs ought to contact their insurance providers to discuss the likely effect of unemployment, although they are not legally obliged to inform their insurers of the change in status until the policy comes up for renewal. It is obviously in the best interests of motorists, now more than ever, to shop around in order to make sure that they are getting the best possible value for money.

uSwitch’s figures were based on quotes from twelve different insurance companies for a male driver previously employed by an accountancy firm.

If there’s one thing last week has taught us, it’s that British drivers simply do not know how to cope with the snow. Make sure you don’t get caught out with out breakdown cover. People across the country have been making the most of the snowy conditions, with many taking advantage of days off work to build a life-size snowman and take part in large-scale snowball fights.

However, for some drivers, last week has brought nothing but misery and unwanted hassle. Monday morning saw drivers hit the roads unprepared for the conditions which awaited them. Both the AA and the RAC reported that their call-out rate had doubled, as drivers experienced problems ranging from breakdowns to minor collisions caused by skidding.

By midday on Monday, the AA had received approximately 8,000 call-out claims, with those drivers ignoring the official advice for motorists to stay off the roads getting into real trouble in conditions which many had never encountered before.

The snowy weather failed to budge as the week progressed and, for those drivers who simply need to travel, some simple tips should be followed in order to keep safe and avoid having to call the insurance company.

You should try pulling away in second gear, since pulling away in first gear causes an unsafe amount of wheel spin. Remember to drive in a gentle and controlled manner in snowy and icy conditions, even if the roads appear completely unaffected. It is also a good idea to carry some blankets, water, an emergency triangle and a mobile phone with you in case of a breakdown in a remote area.