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Private Hire Taxi Insurance and Its Many Perks

Insurance is mandatory for all personal, heavy and light commercial vehicles driving on the roads of the UK irrespective of their intended usage. Be it a private hire taxi, or a public hire taxi, getting the vehicle insured is one of the major tasks to be done before getting it on the road. A public taxi can pick up passengers on the move without any prior arrangement.

However, the private taxis can pick up only the customers who have called to arrange for a private taxi and have given specifics like their name, source location, destination etc. The calls are usually handled by an office which will then allocate private taxis to different private customers. A private taxi cannot take on any passenger without prior arrangement.

In case the taxi is not insured, it is an offence and liable to prosecution under the Road Traffic Act 1988, thus leading to dire consequences. Thus be it a company, or an individual, being informed of the schemes offered by various companies and choosing the one that best suits your business and needs is an important step prior to starting the taxi hire business. An important factor to consider is that if the taxi driver is less than 25yrs old or possesses a poor driving record, the cost of getting your taxi insured will be substantially high. So, choosing driver over the age of 25 and with a clean driving record will help you lower the expenditure of insuring your private taxi.

Taxi insurance is offered by many competitive companies with flexible schemes and payment options. Taxi centrale Zandvoort While insuring a public taxi will need a weekly payment, with private hire taxi insurance, the payment options are monthly thus making it easy and affordable for the taxi owner or the company to pay the instalments. Also, in general, since the revenue from private hire taxis is less, the policy costs less.

The cover will include reimbursement during an accident, or theft, but overall the chances of such occurrences are less as compared to public taxis since their area of cover and number of customers is more. In some cases, the policy also covers the passenger at an additional cost and it might be wise for the private taxi owner to opt for such a scheme depending upon the nature of his business.

While looking for private hire taxi insurance, there are many factors to be kept in mind such as whether the insurance covers all the areas that your taxi visits, the excess cost that you may need to bear during an insurance claim and so on. Though shedding money for the claim can be troublesome, the added advantage is that your premium amount is reduced thus making the whole cost of getting your private taxi insured much less. Also, whether it would be better to opt for breakdown cover or a third party cover needs to be decided by you based on the various factors of your business and terms and conditions of the insurance provider.