Soon, your bad road manners may increase your car insurance premium

Soon, your bad traffic record may cost you big in the form of higher car insurance premium. Transport department is planning to penalise frequent traffic offenders and incentivise those who have not been involved in any road mishap or booked by traffic police in the last five years.

According to a ToI report, the transport department is planning to recommend lower car premium to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) to incentive the good road manners. However, it also plans to recommend higher premium for frequent traffic offenders.

Further, the department is also planning to keep a tab on your car insurance coverage to find out whether you are renewing your policy on time or not. It is planning to computerise the vehicle database using Vahan software to link it with IRDA database. The computer-linked data will help the department to find out car buyers who don't have insurance coverage. According to the report, the department may impound the vehicle if found that the vehicle is not insured and will release the car only after insurance is bought.


Similar rules are quite prevalent in the US where insurance premium becomes costly about 30-40 per cent if the driver is frequent traffic offender.

Road accident numbers are quite high in India. India records highest number of road accidents in the world at 5 lakh road accidents a year, out of which about 1.5 lakh people die.