Temporary car insurance

If you already drive your own car, and are the policyholder of your own comprehensive policy, you're often already covered to drive other people's cars – provided you have their permission.

However, this 'Driving Other Cars' (DOC) clause typically reduces the cover to just third-party only, so if you had a prang in a friend's car, your insurer wouldn't pay out to repair any damage to the car you're driving, it's just cover the damage to the third party.

There are often other restrictions too, such as needing be at least 25-years-old, so always check your policy before getting behind the wheel of another car – you may even need to inform some insurers before you're allowed to drive another car. 

The other alternatives are open to anyone:

• Take out an annual policy, and cancel if you no longer need it. Though temporary car insurance can flex and on off as and when you need it, if you know you'll be needing insurance frequently during the year on the same car, it could work out cheaper to hold an annual policy. 
  
  Equally, if you're looking for a policy for a block period (for example, two months), then you could take out an annual policy and ask to cancel it on a certain date. However, most insurers will add a £50ish cancellation charge, so you'd need to factor this in before signing up. 
  
  
• Become a named driver on an existing annual policy. If you'll be a casual driver on someone else's car (for example, your parent's car when you're back from university), then you can be added as a named driver on their policy. 
  
  This gives you the same cover as the policyholder (so if it's a third-party only policy, you'll have this cover too), but if you had an accident and had to claim, this would also impact the policyholder's claims record. So they could lose any no claims discount they'd built up. 
  
  It can however be a cheap way of having cover. In some cases adding a named driver can actually cut costs, so you could find the policyholder is due a refund. See what affects your quote for full information. 
  
  Warning. Never add someone as a named driver if they're actually the main driver. This is called 'fronting' and is illegal. If you need to claim, this is often checked and your insurance will be invalid if you're caught. You could also face conviction. So don't do it.