AA Drivesafe - Another Black Box Car Insurance Scheme

[Darren]

Hot on the heels of TomTom's announcement last week, the AA have now unveiled their own Insurance product, firmly targeted at young and newly qualified drivers, which also seeks to bring down the cost of motor insurance.

Called 'Drivesafe', it uses a black box fitted to monitor information on speed, cornering force, braking and road types to calculate a Drivesafe 'score'. This score is reviewed throughout the insurance period with safe driving being rewarded by a reduction in your premium. Driving that is deemed to be unsafe could also result in a premium increase.

The Drivesafe website is vague on the technical details of the system. GPS is one part of the hardware and an anti-theft tracking system is another benefit plus an online dashboard where insured drivers can monitor their driving score. An iPhone app is also coming.

Whilst there are some concerns about the risks of big brother style monitoring, young or newly qualified drivers are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain insurance. Any solution that helps reduce premiums could prove very popular.

www.theaadrivesafe.com/.

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Darren Griffin

[M8TJT]

[K13ehr]

It'd be good to see some actual figures of premiums.

I wonder if they'll start of high and then reduce for good behaviour, or start half way along the normal scale for each individual, and then go up/down according to driving style.

Good idea though, except for the big brother GPS telling where they go, time will tell.

[Major_Route]

On the face of it sticking a spy in the car for young drivers to be forced (through their pockets) to adjust to good driving habits should be welcomed. As an older driver I am not the one being targeted so it doesn't affect me. But hold on a minute, what of the future? When will be the day when they charge a normal rate for insurance with the spy onboard and then charge a premium if you don't have one on your vehicle? This is just the start targeting the young driver but as systems get cheaper it WILL become the norm. Are you all ready to accept that your travel is tracked?

Has anyone here tried out some of the driving habit apps for your smart phones that assess your driving skills. They are appallingly inaccurate. I hope these systems have been thoroughly tested and are of a better standard. Just as an example. How often has your satnavs speed for the current stretch of road been wrong? You’re going to get marked down for speeding because the system is out of date. How about that safe overtake you just performed? Did you exceed the speed limit briefly? If they mark you down for swerving or braking hard to avoid that child that runs out what good is that? Let alone dodging potholes and the like. There are so many other things that these systems can’t take into account they become almost worthless. Unless there are enough sensors and gizmos that the car would be able to safely drive its self how can it possibly make accurate judgments on driving habits.

These systems should be independently tested to prove their accuracy and worth before this goes too far.

[rkm_hm]

[Darren]

[AliOnHols]

[Darren]

It's certainly not illegal. If you take your car into the dealer they plug-in and access that data, and, by agreeing to use a service such as this you would be required to agree to having the black box installed plus allowing it to access the OBDII bus data link.
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Darren Griffin

[rkm_hm]

[MaFt]

[aj2052]

What actually constitutes safe driving, some third party sitting at a desk analysing the fact that certain traffic conditions warrant perhaps accelerating hard or some idiot pulls out in front of me causing me to brake hard or comparing some ambigious road speed data given on most satnavs or even deciding that cornering in the wet is the safest speed even in the dry, the mind boggles ?
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Moto G5s Plus, Sygic 17.4.8

[AliOnHols]

[Major_Route]

Yeah I think you're right with the 'thin edge of the wedge' remark. It's just a way to eventually extract more money from the motorist. What happens in the end, instant fines for speeding no matter what the situation. They won't need speed cameras will they. Goodbye CamerAlert. Hell, they won't need traffic police because we'll all be driving so safe accidents won't happen. Then we can all drive around using our mobiles in our smoking vehicles pilled high with unsecured loads with no one to stop us. Thank heavens for that little black box protecting us all.

When will they learn that technology isn't the answer to everything if it's not ready. I don't believe this is until it can actually drive.

What makes me laugh is if the government put up a camera it's for safety but when the chap errected a dummy camera, which isn't illegal, they said if it caused an accident he would be liable. Doh. Therefore by their own admission the SAFETY camera has the potential to cause accidents.

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