Secondary drivers: how many can you have and what’s the cost
Insurance rates seem to be increasing every year. Unfortunately for parents, high insurance costs for teenagers and young adults mean that kids are often unable to afford their own car insurance policies. Without affordable car insurance, young drivers can’t enjoy the same freedom and independence as older generations did.
Fortunately, there’s a solution to the high cost of insurance rates for young drivers—adding a secondary driver to an existing policy.
Lower cost
A secondary, or occasional driver, is an additional driver added onto your insurance policy. This second driver usually drives the vehicle less than the primary driver and, in many cases, doesn’t even own the vehicle he or she is insured to drive.
Because the secondary driver is not considered a full-time driver of the vehicle, he benefits from lower insurance rates than he would otherwise qualify for if he were to buy his own car and insurance policy. For parents with teenagers or young adults at home, this means you can add these secondary drivers onto your existing policy for less than what it would cost them to hold their own insurance.
Another way to further decrease your insurance costs is by enrolling your teenagers in driver’s education classes. Drivers who have taken driver’s ed tend to have fewer accidents which leads to fewer claims and lower insurance rates. The same logic applies to good student discounts. Be sure to talk to your auto insurance broker if you think your secondary driver qualifies for either of those discounts.
Additional benefits
There are other benefits to adding a secondary driver onto your insurance policy. If you add your teenager to your policy starting at 16 and continue coverage until he’s 25, he’ll have almost a decade of insurance history by the time he purchases his own insurance policy. This can mean big savings for him!
Potential downsides
Although the cost of insuring a secondary driver is usually less expensive than the cost of an equivalent primary policy, it’s important to remember that there’s still a cost to add each additional driver onto your auto insurance policy. This cost is determined much the same way as regular insurance policy premiums are calculated. Young drivers, inexperienced drivers and male drivers will generally pay the highest insurance rates, regardless of whether they are primary or secondary drivers.
Different insurance companies will have different rules regarding secondary drivers, but usually there’s no limit to the number of secondary drivers you can add to a policy. However, with each additional driver costing a few hundred dollars more per year, insurance costs can quickly spiral out of control if you add on too many drivers. A family of six, for example, might not want to add five secondary drivers to each of their two vehicles. Instead, they could split the family in two, with a parent and two young adults on each policy.
If you’re considering adding a secondary driver to your insurance policy, you might be nervous about the potential increase to your auto insurance premiums. Fortunately, this increase is often significantly lower than what the additional driver would pay by himself. By adding secondary drivers to your insurance, you’re helping them build an insurance history and save money at the same time, a win-win for any parent.