In Japan, we have a nice carve-up where the government sets insurance rates centrally, and all the companies follow them. So no need to phone around, as the quote will be the same. (Actually, this is starting to crumble a little bit with the advent of foreign owned companies trying to get in to the market, but the majority of people are still on standard rates). However, given that you can still claim for theft even if you left the car unlocked and the keys in the ignition, it's not so bad.

In Hong Kong, there seems to be an undeclared cartel (oops, I mean allegedly), which occasionally decides en masse that certain cars just aren't suitable. So one year, the annual premium for my Moderate European Sports Car went from about $1800 to over $9000. This for a car worth less than $60,000, and me a very safe and careful driver (well, according to their records, anyway). So I had to drop from fully comp to third party only.

Tony, this won't make you feel any better, but there are essentially no speed traps here. (Mostly because there's only about one road where you can break the limit anyway).

Regards

Mark