However, now there is yet another deterrent to prevent people from carrying out such reckless behaviour, and it comes in the form of car insurance premiums.

MoneySupermarket recently revealed that drivers who are convicted for drink driving can expect their car insurance premiums to rise from an average of £424 up to £784.

This is a rise of 85%, and it can happen even if the motorist has an exemplary driving history and a no claims bonus.

And this is if the driver can get insurance at all, because they may find it harder to find an insurer willing to provide them with cover after being convicted.

It seems that there should already be enough deterrents in place to stop people drink driving. Anyone convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol could face fines of £1,000 and more, a complete ban on driving for a year or more and even a prison sentence.

A large proportion of accidents on the roads involve drink driving, and yet still people get behind the wheel after too many drinks.

The best advice is simply to refrain from drinking at all if you are going to drive. Instead of taking the risk of driving, make sure you plan your night out in advance so that there is always a designated driver in place to avoid the temptation to drive back at the end of the night following a few drinks.

• You may think that as a valued customer your insurer will give you a good deal but far from it! Often it is the new customer who will get the best deal so ask your insurers if they will match any offers available to non-existing customers.
• Illogically, a comprehensive premium is often cheaper than a third-party one on the basis that it is often the young drivers who opt for third-party cover and they are a high-risk group. Don’t make assumptions on anything!
• Use comparison websites by all means but bear in mind that some companies such as Aviva and Direct Line never feature on these sites so don’t forget to check their prices too.
• If you are a young driver consider a specialist policy where a black box is fitted to track your mileage. The less you drive the less you pay.
• Check the internet for cash-back deals and discounts to see whether you can reduce your costs further.
• It can often be cheaper to add a second driver to the policy but never be tempted into “fronting” i.e. saying someone else is the main driver if they are not.
• Make sure you opt for the highest excess that you can afford.

It goes without saying that motorists should never lie about their circumstances just to get a cheaper quote.

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.

The good news is that according to confused.com although 14% of us are still foolish enough to think that they can pull the wool over the eyes of the insurance company, the figure has actually dropped since last year. The figure for 2010 was a staggering 39% of motorists lying in order to get cheaper insurance, with men proving to be less honest than their female counterparts (32% of women and 46% of men lied).

The most common whopper is mileage, with many drivers understating their annual mileage. Next on the list of lies is details of where the car is kept overnight, either saying that the car is garaged overnight when it is in fact kept on the drive or saying it is kept on the drive when it is actually kept on the road.

Geographically London has the worst rate for lying (19%) with Northern Ireland doing best of all with only 2% of motorists failing to tell the truth.

Anyone tempted to stretch the truth would of course do well to remember that lies could invalidate any claim. This really is a case of honesty being the best policy.

The depressing figures come from The AA which recently released its latest British Insurance Premium Index. It found that, over the past 12 months, fully comprehensive insurance premiums have gone up by a massive 40%, meaning the average premium now costs £892 a year.

Third party, fire and theft premiums went up even further, jumping by a massive 82% in 12 months, meaning now the average premium is £1,533. In the first three months of this year alone the rise was 10.7%.

The rise in the cost of car insurance is the highest annual rise since 1994 when the AA began to collect data. But even so, insurers are still making losses.

The rise in premiums comes as a double blow to motorists who are also having to contend with rising fuel costs. The combination of the two means that driving is now less affordable than ever, and this is leading to other problems.

The AA claims that more customers are not giving their full information now when looking for quotes, and that people are also trying to get more from personal injury claims. Such claims are one of the biggest reasons for the rise in premiums, with the ABI (Association of British Insurers) claiming that for every £1 in compensation, 87p is now added in legal expenses. Now there are hundreds of claims being made every day for accidents, sometimes for ones which occurred years ago.

The pre-tax profit for 2010 was announced as £266 million, which represents a 23% increase on 2009 figures. To make things even rosier, it performed better than predicted by £4 million, according to the predictions of city analysts.

One of the most successful areas for the company was car insurance, where it saw a massive growth of over 30%. The UK sector was especially good for the insurer, but its overseas operations were not quite as successful and saw losses of £12.9 million compared to £10.3 million in 2009.

One area in the UK that has suffered is its Confused.com business. It saw a large 34% drop in earnings to £16.9 million during 2010, a factor it puts down to the increased competition in the comparison website sector.

Admiral also announced that it is planning to locate its new headquarters near St David’s shopping centre in Cardiff where it will locate up to 3,000 staff.

Henry Engelhardt, the company’s chief executive, said that it has now generated a turnover of more than £1.5 billion, but admitted that there was a lot to be done in its businesses outside the UK.

He also commented on the recent EU ruling that means insurers can no longer charge different premiums to men and women, claiming that it would lead to increased profits for Admiral.

The poll of 1,610 motorists found that the tyre tread was the most neglected area of the vehicle with 62% of the respondents saying that they did not check it monthly. This was followed by the water coolant, which 56% failed to check. Windscreen wipers, oil level, lights and tyre pressure were also high on the list.

The research also took regional differences into account and discovered that the fewest vehicle checks are made in London and the east of England, whereas those in the East Midlands, the northeast of England and Scotland were the best at looking after their vehicles.

There were also large differences between age groups. A total of 15% of those aged over 65 failed to make monthly checks, compared to 29% of those aged 18 to 24. Men also seemed to do better than women, with 16% of men failing to check their vehicles compared to 26% of women.

So why are so many people failing to check their vehicles regularly? A full third of those who are not making any checks responded that they don’t think the checks are necessary.

But failing to make regular maintenance checks can be bad news for motorists. If problems are not picked up on early then this could lead to other costly problems when it comes to insurance. For example, failing to check tyre tread could increase the chances of skidding and damaging the car, which could lead to a claim.

Once a claim has been made, insurance premiums can get a lot more expensive, so it makes sense to do all that you can to prevent this from happening, and a few simple checks is all that it takes.

When you get your motor insurance renewal notice, are you one of the 6.4 million motorists who renew blindly? If so, you could be throwing money down the drain to the tune, on average, of a staggering £270 a year.

Research from moneysupermarket.com has revealed that car insurance is one area where loyalty really does not pay. Insurance companies are, of course, always keen to get new customers and will often offer competitive deals to lure us into signing on the dotted line but after the first year premiums frequently rocket.

Almost one fifth of us (19% to be precise) refuse to take the time to see whether or not we could get a better deal and renew blindly. Reasons for this range from apathy (8%), to the belief that we would not find a better bargain anyway (11%). As far as age is concerned, the over 55s are the worst culprits, with 21% not bothering to shop around.

The costs of running a car have risen sharply in the last twelve months and the recent troubles in the Middle East have meant that petrol prices have soared. It is therefore all the more surprising that so many of us are not bothering to see whether we can cut costs.

Insurance companies are well aware of customers’ behaviour and rely on our apathy to bolster profits. As a whole, the nation is spending £1.7 billion more than necessary, by neglecting to spend the relatively short time needed to compare prices.

However, one method of cutting the cost of insurance for young drivers that you may not have heard about is installing a new ‘spy box’ in whatever vehicle is being used by the respective driver. With premiums over the past year rising by as much as 50%, young drivers are bound to see no drawbacks to using the new device, which uses GPS technology to send information to the insurance company providing the driver with the policy.

The device keeps track of details such as driving habits, speed, locations being driven in and around on a regular basis, and the rates of both acceleration and braking. Prices should subsequently be reduced by the insurance company if the signals sent back from the spy box point towards careful and responsible driving.

With the boxes also able to act as tracking devices using GPS technology, cars with the devices installed are far more likely to be recovered if stolen than those without them. It therefore seems that this is one innovation in the car insurance industry that may be here to stay for the long haul.

The AA learnt this painful lesson during the big freeze at the beginning of 2010. During that period it saw a large number of claims due to problems with suspension, car wheels and damage to the bodywork all caused by potholes.

And the cost of the claims isn’t anything to be taken lightly. The average claim due to pothole damage is over £1,300 and AA confirmed that its most expensive claim last year was over £14,000.

In view of this the AA is advising drivers to be especially careful on the roads at the moment.

Potholes are the plague of UK roads. They form when water beneath the surface of the road freezes, which then makes the surface loose. Once the water melts or vehicles pass over the area, the potholes form and become worse.

The AA is warning that this winter is expected to be particularly bad because it is the third cold winter in a row, and there were already potholes to be fixed before the cold weather arrived.

Simon Douglas, who is the director of AA insurance, advised drivers to “keep a sharp eye out for potholes and keep their speed down”. He said that this was especially important when driving on secondary roads and also when it is raining because the potholes can be hidden by water. He also warned that a lot of potholes are unlikely to be repaired because of cuts to maintenance budgets.