WHY should you bother with car insurance? Even on Friday 13, after all, what are the chances you might need it? If you’re a young driver, especially, it seems – at first sight – a bit pointless. The average penalty for driving without insurance is around £200 to £300. But for a teenager to insure a car is often well over £1,000. So, theoretically, you could save yourself £700.

Don’t even think about it. Just don’t.

Driving without insurance is not clever and will only end in tears – probably yours. Here’s why you should insure your car:

■ It’s illegal not to.

■ The typical fine might be around £300, but magistrates can fine you up to £5,000 if they like. Then there are penalty points and maybe a driving ban.

■ They can tow your car away and charge you a daily fee for looking after it – £15 a day for 14 days. That’s £310 if you don’t collect it until the last minute.

■ Or they can crush it into something the size of a washing machine. Not good. Hard to drive too.

■ If you crash your car into someone else’s, not only will you have to pay for the repairs to your own car, but also to theirs. Bad luck if it’s a footballer’s Ferrari.

Or even a nice new family hatchback.

Got £15,000 spare, have you?

■ If you injure people, you could be liable for compensation. Which could easily take you to millions of pounds.

Never mind the cost to your conscience, if you have one.

The bad news is that the cost of car insurance is rising sharply. Too may of us are making too many claims. Also, those of us who are honest are paying about an extra £30 a year for the toads who have no insurance.

There are ways to cut down on the cost of insurance – increasing the voluntary excess, limiting the car to named drivers or keeping the mileage low. And never ever renew car insurance – or any other insurance come to that – without comparing a number of quotes.

But one way not to do it is to tell lies.

Insurance companies aren’t as dim as we’d like to think they are. And they’re getting fed up with our fibs. Last year they turned down 30 per cent more claims because of dishonest claimants.

You know the sort of thing – you say the car is driven by your nice safe mum once a week to the hairdresser, when in fact it’s your teenage son racing round the countryside at all hours of the night. Or saying your car is locked safely in the garden in a quiet village when it’s actually on the roadside in the centre of Newcastle.

Increasingly, with instant access to shared information, the insurance companies have the upper hand, so it’s best to be upfront and honest. Give in and pay up. It saves a lot of hassle.