Cold snap pushes car insurance searches on 4×4 vehicles

The cold snap sweeping across the country is pushing searches for car insurance on 4×4 vehicles up as consumers look for better protection for their cars under extreme weather conditions, comparison website moneysupermarket.com said.

The website has noted that searches for 4×4 car insurance jumped 42 percent from January 5 to January 10, 2010 compared with the same period in December. Moneysupermarket.com analysed over one million car insurance searches since the heavy snow started falling last week.

Steve Sweeney, head of car insurance at moneysupermarket.com said, “It appears many Brits found failings in their vehicles once the heavy snow hit, finding that their cars just couldn’t cope with such extreme weather conditions.”

Sweeney described the surge in car insurance search as understandable considering the amount of snow that fell in such a short period of time.

“People may be thinking about preparing themselves against any further snowy conditions that are on the way, or indeed, if snow filled winters are to be a regular occurrence in the future. However, when we do suffer from such severe snow and ice causing treacherous driving conditions the advice is generally to stay off the roads entirely. Having a more able vehicle for driving in the snow is not a guarantee that your journey would be any safer or less eventful when faced with such unpredictable driving conditions,” he said.

Sweeney said that the searches for new 4×4 model vehicles peaked on January 7. More than three percent of all car insurance searches on January 8 are for a four wheel drive vehicle.