It’s a day that many parents dread. Your child’s seventeenth birthday dawns and you're faced with the first of no-doubt many requests for a car. There’s no denying that driving is an important life skill; and a value can’t be placed on the sense of independence and responsibility it will hopefully ,give your child,not to mention the fact that you won’t have to fetch and carry for them anymore. But, just as daydreams of not having to get up at one in the morning, to pick your child up from a party on the other side of town, begin to steal into your head, reality brings you crashing down.

It’s no secret that teenage drivers are one of the most expensive groups to insure. There are a few reasons for this, the main one being that statistics show the risk of a crash per mile driven is three times higher for 16 to 19 year olds than for drivers aged 65 to 69. Factors like lack of experience, nerves or pressure from their friend’s means that teenagers are more likely to have accidents. Thus, there is a greater chance that you’ll have to make a claim on your insurance and rates will inevitably be higher. Bad luck for boys as well as companies charge up to double for male teenage drivers. However, there are some ways to get a better bargain.

The most obvious place to start is by using a comparison website. You can fill in a comprehensive online form and get accurate quotes from numerous different companies; providing you with a practical way to find the best deals.

Another option is to add your child to your policy as a named driver. This means that the majority of the insurance cost is calculated using your statistics, and you’ll avoid some of the extra charge for teenagers. Another clever way to both improve your child’s driving and lower your insurance policy is for your child to take a ‘Pass Plus’ course. This comprises a series of lessons taken after a driver passes his or her test, which deal with trickier driving situations like motorways or country roads. Some companies cut as much as a third off a teenager’s driving insurance if one of these courses has been undertaken.Aagain, it’s worth shopping around for the best deal.

A final option is to try and get car insurance which offers additional benefits that will go some way to justifying the high cost of insuring a teenager. One example is with Kwik Fit Insurance, which offers some useful features to drivers who take out an insurance policy with them. These include a courtesy car if the insurer’s car is lost or stolen, full glass cover and 10% off repairs at Kwik Fit centres (which could be especially useful with a new driver behind the wheel). Take a look at their website to obtain a cheap car insurance quote.