In this modern age, a motorcycle can bring a fantastic sense of freedom, allowing the opportunity to leave the crowd behind. With congestion reaching new levels and the daily commute taking longer and longer, a motorcycle can be an enormous timesaver. An experienced rider can use their machine to duck and weave through even the heaviest traffic, shaving minutes off each and every journey. That equates to big time savings over the course of a year. This time could be spent with your family, or catching up on sleep.

When riding a motorcycle, you are literally taking your life into your own hands. You are travelling at high speeds without the protection afforded by the cage of steel a car gives you. Your only route to avoiding injury is to avoid having an accident all together. Therefore, your level of skill in handling your motorcycle will have an immediate and profound effect on your safety. It’s essential to have adequate bike insurance if you do ever have an accident.

A motorcycle is an agile machine so with this correct set of skills and road acuity you can expect years of trouble-free riding. To increase the likelihood of this it is worth investing time and money in proper training. This gives you the opportunity to take a step back from the day-to-day driving experience and receive proper coaching in any areas that require it. An advanced motorcycle riding course will tackle the full range of skills necessary to increase your confidence and competence on the road. This will turn you into a more confident, safer driver, and an excellent ambassador for motorcyclists as a whole.

Further training can help almost any rider. Perhaps you have taken a break from your beloved hobby due to ill health, adverse weather or your motorcycle has fallen into disrepair. It is possible that you have had an accident and are reluctant to take to the roads again. Some may have been riding for a number of years and feel that you know how to handle your motorcycle pretty well. It is however certainly possible that, over the years, you have acquired a number of bad habits that may be reducing your competency on the road. Riding schools often ask students to bring their own motorcycles to class, allowing teachers to observe you riding your own machine.

This eliminates the need to get used to a new vehicle before the learning can commence. Taking an advanced motorcycle course will provide an opportunity to brush up on forgotten or neglected skills. There’s no substitute for an experienced instructor observing you and your motorcycle directly. The opportunity to observe how you perform from the outside is invaluable, enabling them to provide clear and concise directions towards improving skills.

Motorbike insurance is essential, and one way to make a substantial saving on this expense is to prove your competency with and an advanced driving certificate. Discounts can range from 5 to 20% depending on the insurer which can be a considerable saving. Look out for specialist insurance providers who specifically service motorcyclists. Motorcycle Direct is one such company.

small> photo credit: Reemul

This is a pity because a typical motorbike insurance policy may prove to be a lot simpler than the average bike’s engine!

Key focus

For motorbike insurance, Northern Ireland insurance providers will typically be more than willing to clarify anything that’s unclear.

Of course, it’s also probably a fair guess that some bikers really only want to understand one component of their insurance – it’s price.

Understandable as that may appear to be, it may prove to be a little short sighted.

The fact is that if you’re unfortunate enough to have need to make a claim on your bike insurance, it’s also probably safe to bet that you will suddenly be very interested indeed in what your insurance does (and more importantly, does not) cover.

Don’t leave it too late

After you’ve had a problem is not the time to decide to sit down and finally decide to have that first read of your policy. It should ideally be done before you decide to buy or renew it.

In reality, the detail of both the cover provided and the terms and conditions (things that may affect your ability to make a claim) may vary considerably between policies. Not all motorcycle insurance cover is identical.

It’s typically a smart idea to be sure that you understand these areas in detail so as to be clear that you will be getting the cover you think you need.

So, you don’t need to gamble with your finances. For motorbike insurance, Northern Ireland providers will typically make the detail available to you – so use it!

Of course, for car and motorcycle insurance, Northern Ireland historically was something of a challenge to say the least. Difficult to find, when you did obtain cover it was sometimes eye-wateringly expensive.

One of the big reasons for this was the history that had led to many insurers no longer offering their products in Northern Ireland due to their perceptions of high risk.

The really good news is that things are now changing rapidly and there are internet sites that provide access to multiple insurance companies that are now offering their products once again in Northern Ireland.

Using the sites may save you a significant amount of time because although things are improving quickly, it remains the case that many major insurers are still not operating here – and that can make searching a little tedious.

Don’t forget that if you are looking for motorbike insurance, Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, utilises certain basic insurance assumptions in terms of setting price levels.

These may be very familiar to you but they may not, so it is perhaps worth briefly summarising some of them here:

• very big and powerful motorcycles will typically be more expensive to insure than their smaller and more modest cousins;
• younger and more inexperienced motorcyclists plus big powerful bikes may prove to be a very expensive combination (in fact, some insurers may have strict minimum age requirements depending on the CC level of the machine concerned);
• you may be able to find discounts on premiums if you have completed a recognised advanced motorcyclists course;
• keeping your licence clean may be very important if you wish to avoid paying higher levels of premium.

All of these steps, plus a few others, may help you discover that motorcycle insurance, Northern Ireland and cost-effective premiums, are not incompatible concepts!

There are a few points you may want to bear in mind though when looking for those all-important economies.

• If you accept a higher excess, then this is the amount that you could be asked to pay if you do have to make a claim at some point in the future.
• Cover where you have the option of fully comprehensive in summer, when you may use your bike more and third party for winter when you may prefer to use a means of transport more suited to the weather, can be cost effective.
• If you change jobs and start to use your motorcycle for work, your motorcycle insurance in Northern Ireland may be more expensive than if you use your bike solely for commuting or recreational purposes. Don’t be tempted to make do to save some money. It could cost you dear in the long run.
• Similarly, if your career switch goes in the opposite direction, make sure your insurance provider knows of the change so they can reduce your premiums to match your new circumstances.
• You may really enjoy the attention that riding a big impressive bike can bring. As a general rule of thumb though, bigger and more powerful bikes are typically more expensive to insure. If all you’re looking for is a means of transport, then a smaller model will do the job of getting you from A to B just as well as a bigger machine.
• Pay as you go, providing cover by the month, can be an extremely attractive option if you don’t use your bike all the time. You may have to make sure that you fully understand your usage patterns and the point at which this could end up more expensive than an annual policy.

The choice is there

The opening out of our insurance market has introduced choice where very little existed previously. This can only be good news if you are looking for motorcycle insurance in Northern Ireland.