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Insurer Measures Driver Safety With Smartphone App To Calculate Premiums

Posted by samzenpus on from the how's-my-driving dept.

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."

2 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Begging to be gamed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Besides the fact that this is begging to be gamed, how to they tell the difference between someone driving carefully and some half-blind octogenarian that's causing traffic accidents around them by driving too slow and failing to react to near-misses that may affect the next driver?

    1. Re:Begging to be gamed by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd say it is more a slippery slope:

      The insurance company incentivises people to provide very detailed information about themselves, that they would normally never provide, and may even try to prevent being obtained.

      In the process, they build a precedent that will penalize people that are unwilling to provide this data willingly.

      EG, it starts out as "If I voluntarily join this program, I could say 20% on my insurance." It then later becomes the "New standard rate metric, based on your personal driving patterns," and eventually becomes "Penalized rate for not providing data on your traffic patterns."

      While it looks good now, it wont look so good to people who value their privacy in the future. They will be lumped in with people who are clearly bad drivers but dont want to admit it, and want to hide that fact from the insurance companies.