Car insurance and teens

[3teens2cats]

So 18 year old ds1 passed his driving test this week. He is is chuffed to bits but realistically isn't going to be able to drive much because we only have one family car which dh uses every day and where we live we really don't need or want to run another car. We thought it would be nice to add him to the policy so he can use it every now and then but ouch, the cost just doesn't justify it. When he was learning he had his own learner policy where he booked driving days and it worked really well but can't find anything similar for new drivers. Has anyone else found a good solution in this situation? I suspect the harsh reality is that there is no cheap way of getting him occasional access to a car.

Some insurers are more teen friendly than others. Can you shop around and if necessary change your current policy? When our DCs started driving Admiral was usually the cheapest. Even when DD1 got her own car multi car with Admiral was the cheapest.

Thank you. Definitely going to shop around. Also just stumbled across temporary insurance which could work maybe. Just buying cover for a day when he has a reason to use the car. Not very spontaneous but could be a way of him getting to drive every once in a while.

We used Marmalade when DS was learning and after he passed we carried on.
He's at Uni now so we will use it again when he's back for the summer. pricey though but there's no avoiding that.

Keeps him seperate from my policy.

17 year old DS passed a couple of weeks ago. We had also used learner insurance for him in my car. They did offer to do an extension of that for short periods as new driver insurance but it was really expensive - I think it worked out at about £250 for a month of cover.

I'd already done a few comparisons and I can get him insured for a year for around £750 so we decided to wait until he had full access to a car. He has decided to travel to uni (by train) so since that is saving accommodation costs, we've used the money to get a small car for his use (to get to and from the station) and his brother also to use when he passes (he'll be 17 in August). We pick it up next week. I've added DH and I as named drivers but given that he'll have telemetrics fitted, I think we will try to avoid driving it in case our bad habits put his premium up!

What would it cost to occasionally hire a car? might that be cheaper than to insure him on yours? I think it's quite important for them to get some decent driving experience after passing or he risks losing his skills before he's even consolidated them. I keep saying that basically passing your test is just them saying that you are safe to learn on your own now rather than with an instructor and it doesn't mean that you are completely competent.

Meant to add that it cost the same amount (more or less) to add him as a named driver on my policy as it costs for him to be the main driver on his own policy.