Skip to content
Car Insurance WheelUK motoring, explained
UK motoring, insurance and vehicle care

The rules of the road, translated into plain English.

Independent guides to car insurance, road tax, MOTs, running costs and motorcycles for drivers in the UK. We explain what the rules actually say, what things cost and where the money goes, so you can make your own decisions.

Why this site exists

Most of what a UK driver pays for is decided by rules rather than by choice. The law says you must be insured; the Treasury sets the tax; the DVSA sets the test; a city council decides whether your car pays to enter the centre. The rules are public, but they are written for lawyers and scattered across dozens of official pages, and the commercial sites that summarise them usually want to sell you something at the end.

Car Insurance Wheel is the reference we wanted to find: each rule explained once, in plain English, with the number it costs and the date that number applies to, and with no product to sell at the bottom of the page. The guides are organised into four sections, so that a question about a renewal letter, a tax reminder, an MOT failure sheet or a first motorcycle each has an obvious place to start.

What the guides will and will not do

They will tell you how a rule works, what it costs and what most people get wrong about it. They will not tell you which policy to buy, because we are a publisher and not a regulated adviser, and because the right answer depends on details of your own situation that a website cannot see. When you finish a guide you should be able to read your own documents, ask your insurer or garage the right question and recognise a bad answer.

Can't find the answer?

Tell us which question sent you here. Reader questions decide what we write next.

Ask a question