Young males now paying £4,000 for car insurance

Car insurance premiums just keep on going up and, as usual, it is young males who suffer the most. Now Confused.com has announced the shocking news that car insurance for young male drivers will now set them back an average of more than £4,000 a year.

This, along the with other expenses involved in running a car and the high cost of petrol, means that the average young male aged between 17 and 20 will now have to pay about £6,500 a year to own and use a car.

At the moment, women in the same age bracket are paying just slightly over half that amount. However, this may soon change when insurance companies will no longer be able to discriminate on gender from the end of 2012 according to new EU legislation.

The research was carried out by Confused.com and Towers Watson. However, upon releasing the data, insurance firms announced that the prices they charge (average of £4,006 for comprehensive insurance for young males and £2,151 for young females) are justified because young men pose a much higher risk.

A spokesperson for Confused.com said that now a young male driver will have to pay so much to run a car that they will effectively be spending about half their average salary.

The fear now is that some young drivers will decide that insurance is just too much and will choose instead not to purchase insurance rather than stop driving altogether.

At the same time, the average cost of comprehensive insurance across all age ranges continues to rise. It is currently £858 a year, which is a £22 rise in the last three months and a £170 rise compared to last year.