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Insurer Measures Driver Safety With Smartphone App To Calculate Premiums
Qedward writes "Motorists are being invited to help develop a new driving app that could earn them a discount of 'up to 20%' on their motor insurance. British insurer Aviva is using smartphone technology to create individual driver profiles that will be used to calculate tailored pay-how-you-drive premiums. The driver behavioral app, Aviva RateMyDrive, will monitor motorists taking part in the test for 200 miles, including acceleration, braking and cornering. This data is then turned into an individual score which helps determine the motorist's premium, with 'safer' drivers earning up to 20% off their deal."
How long before the insurance company succumbs to the temptation of penalizing those who use their cars too much? The more time you spend on the road the higher the chance that you'll be involved in an incident, regardless of how well you drive. You can see how such information could be used to discriminate against people living in rural areas and those living further from their place of work.
I thought insurance companies already do this. Every company I've had a policy with has always wanted current and yearly mileage when I signed up. Driving fewer miles in a year resulted in lower premiums.
Progressive is already using a feature like this in the U.S. It's just not a smart phone app. It's actually a little box you put in your car. It's called Snapshot. Not my kind of thing. There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.
How is this new?
In Spain, MAPFRE has been offering for at least 4 years the YCar line of insurance for young drivers which offers as much as a 40% discount if you install a GPS-like device which sends them information about when you drive, what speed you drive, how many kilometers, etc.
If you speed up, drive on "dangerous" hours (e. g. weekend 2 AM - 6 AM), etc, you lose the discount for next year.
http://www.mapfre.com/seguros/es/particulares/soluciones/seguros-coches-jovenes-ycar.shtml
There are several policies to choose and some of them even allow to adjust the policy clauses, for instance in case you are a young driver who works the night shift.
Tell them you work from home and you drive an average of 20 miles a week. Your rate will drop.
Until they cross reference your stated mileage against your MOT certificate and you get prosecuted for insurance fraud.
It's fraud (and these days, money laundering) and you get spanked for it. Don't lie to insurance companies*.
*Disclaimer: I work for an insurance company.
The UK insurance industry has a huge problem with bogus whiplash claims - the slightest little bump and lawyers are pushing for thousands of pounds in compensation for a medical condition which doctors admit is almost impossible to prove either way. This has lead to a fivefold increase in some insurance costs over the last fifteen years. Schemes like this, and others where rolling camera footage is stored, are an attempt to show that these low speed collisions are generating claims far beyond what is reasonable.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
You are mistaken, just like this guy, and my reply to him is the same as it is to you. Your insurance is there to cover you, not anybody else.
I'm not mistaken about anything. The topic of who's liability is covered wasn't part of my post. My post was regarding the fact that mandatory third party liability insurance is there to ensure that you can afford to pay when your errors when driving a car cause harm to others.
And in my country at least, the injured party does not sue you. It is you legal duty to provide your insurance details to the other person whenever you are involved in a road traffic accident, and they do indeed claim directly from your insurance. You do not have the option to personally refuse to pay for example. The insurance company pays them directly, not you.
It is your personal responsibility to cover yourself with enough insurance so that if something happens to you, you do not have to worry about paying for your bills and such.
It's more than your personal responsibility. it's your legal duty. The law is there to protect people from idiots that think they don't need insurance, and who then are not able to pay when they cause harm to others.
Your attitude to perfectly reasonable rules of law is more than a little cranky. Fraud? You're nuts.