Most teenagers look forward to owning their first car. Then comes the shock – not the cost of the car – but the cost of insuring it!

Take a 1995 1.0L VW Polo for example. Not exactly a boy racers delight but it has four wheels and it will get you around. The cost of insuring that car for a 17 year old student is around £2,370! That’s more than twice what the car is worth.

No wonder the UK is experiencing huge numbers of uninsured drivers. Young drivers simply cannot afford the cost and, as a result, choose to drive illegally. If they’re caught by the police, the fine will only be a hundred pounds or so and they’ll get time to pay. So why should they worry?

Some will take the twilight option of insuring the car with their parents as the main drivers and them as a named driver. That would be cheaper and get them insured – or would it? Actually, no they wouldn’t be insured if the insurance company found out about the cosy arrangement. That arrangement is called “fronting” and it’s fraud. If the insurer can prove fronting, the policy would be voided.

In addition, the parents and the teenager would go on a central register maintained by the insurance industry of people who have defrauded an insurer. If you thought it was difficult to get insurance – any insurance – then try now!

We are not proposing any solution to this problem, but somehow it needs to be solved. Unless it’s solved, properly insured young drivers are going to be a rare breed.