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."

Comments

Begging to be gamed

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Begging to be gamed

[wierd_w]

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.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[History's Coming To]

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.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[SteveAyre]

Aviva developed a Pay As You Go insurance system several years ago now.
http://www.aviva.co.uk/media-centre/story/2840/norwich-union-launches-innovative-pay-as%20you-drive/

We studied it as part of a project during my CompSci course about the time it was launched.

Essentially you agree that they put a GPS tracker in your car. It monitors your speed/acceleration/braking/etc (just like the app). You then only pay insurance for when you are driving, and the price is affected by how well you drive. It's been around for some time now. It's fixed to your car, and if you remove it from your car so they don't see your bad driving you're illegally driving without insurance.

All the phone app is is a free trial of that type of insurance - far cheaper to give them an app than send them a tracker. If you were to actually buy their insurance there's no way they'd let you keep using the phone app for it. Too much chance of forgetting the phone or battery dying, let alone any 'gaming'.

public transport?

[LSDelirious]

Wonder how they would rate me if I took the bus to work for a week? Certainly wouldn't catch me speeding or accelerating/decelerating too hard, but I wonder how the frequent stops would factor in? Also if you didn't put your phone into airplane mode, would being a passenger in a 737 double your rates when they clock you doing 150+mph at takeoff before you ascend above cell reception range?

Re:Drive too much?

[BradleyUffner]

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.

Plead the 5th

[LSDelirious]

Letting them track you is like talking to a cop who's placed you under arrest... they might convince you that you're being given a chance to prove what an upstanding law abiding citizen you are, but in reality they're only looking for the incriminating parts to hold against you. Its the marketing folks jobs to come up with hypothetical situations where you can save money so you'll switch to their brand... its the bean counters and their lawyers jobs to see that you don't ever actually qualify for said hypothetical discounts, and you are giving them the ammo...

Only 200 miles

[AmiMoJo]

So I have to drive carefully for 200 miles to get my rating up and then I can turn it off and go back to my old habits? Or just swap phones with my mum for 200 miles? Or just not take my (primary) phone when I want to have some fun?

Re:Not too sure on this

[Cederic]

The actual issue is that it's just 200 miles - hardly a reasonable sample.

Exactly. Get onto a motorway at 2am, hit 70mph, cruise control on, no need to brake, accelerate or turn corners for the next 200 miles.

Or maybe 100 miles, if you then find a junction and take a leisurely trip around a roundabout to get back onto the motorway to come home again.

That approach also avoids them

monitoring where I go

I'm not going anywhere, just doing a quick data gathering exercise to save money on my car insurance.

Where all of this breaks down is that such a journey would cost me £25 in diesel, and that's well over 10% of my annual car insurance premium. Given that Aviva are around 15% more expensive than my current insurer, I'm better off just not bothering.

A 20% discount just doesn't justify the time, effort and (since they'll never stop at 200 miles, within a year it'll be ten times that) intrusion.

Re:Drive too much?

[Cederic]

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.

Re:Not too sure on this

[JosKarith]

This is another thin end of the wedge situation. For now it's an optional 200 mile sample. Then it'll be permanantly on. Then having this will be a condition of your insurance...
Remember that as this is a smartphone app location data will also be captured. Do you really want your insurer knowing everywhere you go? How long before the Police demand that data to track where someone's been?
OBdisclaimer - I work for an insurance company and I'm extremely uneasy about this.

Re:break the law.

[paiute]

Imagine if tax time came and nobody paid the taxes.
Imagine if everybody cancelled their insurance and drove anyway.
Imagine if everybody had drugs on them at all times.

You just gave the for-profit prison industry a huge erection.