Generally speaking, the more miles you drive in a year, the more you’ll pay for your car insurance cover.
Insurance is all about risk. The more time you spend on the road, the more likely it is that you’ll be involved in an accident. This is why insurers often consider high-mileage drivers to be a higher risk than low-mileage drivers.
When taking out a policy, insurers will ask you to specify an estimated mileage for the coming year. You should declare an honest and accurate estimation of your mileage when answering this question.
But what happens if you do more miles than you said you would do?
What Happens If You Do More Miles Than Your Insurance?
Technically, you should tell your insurer about any change to your car use, and this extends to mileage.
Let’s say you tell your insurer you intend to drive 10,000 miles in a year. You calculated this figure based on your past driving habits. Through looking at your MOT certificates from previous years, you’ve got a pretty good idea of how many miles you generally clock up over the course of a year.
But what if your circumstances change significantly? What if you change jobs and your commute is suddenly twice as long as it used to be? You could end up driving 20,000 miles over the course of the year, or more.
You would certainly have to tell your insurer about this. If you don’t it will have an impact in the event that you need to make a claim.
Can You Amend the Mileage On Your Insurance?
Most insurers will allow you to increase your mileage if you underestimated it or if your circumstances have changed. You’ll only encounter problems if you significantly underestimated your mileage (for example, if you estimated you’d do 4,000 miles in a year but ultimately drove 40,000 miles), or if your insurer suspects that you tried to deliberately misrepresent your mileage to obtain a lower premium.
What’s Considered Low Mileage Per Year?
According to the Department for Transport, private cars travelled an average of 6,600 miles in 2022 up from 5,300 miles in 2021. However, both figures were lower than the average in 2019 at 7,400. This will almost certainly be due to when most of the UK stayed at home under imposed lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid. Anything between 0 to 6,000 miles could be deemed as low annual mileage.
Should I Consider Pay Per Mile Insurance?
Above we mentioned how experienced drivers can refer to previous years’ MOT certificates to get a good idea of their average annual mileage. But what if you’re a new driver and you don’t have any MOT certificates to refer to?
One option is to choose a pay per mile insurance policy – which might also be referred to as “telematics” or “black box” insurance.
This involves installing a small device in your car, about the size of a smartphone. This device will then monitor your driving habits and your mileage. Your insurers will then calculate the cost of your premium on a rolling basis.
Pay per mile car insurance policies can help young drivers and new drivers make savings on the cost of car insurance. But these arrangements aren’t for everyone.
If you drive more miles in a month than you expected, you might end up paying more for your insurance than you would have with a standard policy.
Some pay per mile insurance policies will penalise you if you drive at certain times – usually during rush hour or after dark. So if you use your car to commute, this sort of policy could prove prohibitively costly.
Updating Your Policy
If you have an Insure 2 Drive car insurance policy and need to make any changes, you can do this in your secure Customer Account. If you are new to Insure 2 Drive, why not get a quote and see what we can offer you.
