I wonder how long it will be before someone works out how to drive the car while this is disconnected, creating the impression of someone who uses the car very infrequently.
New driver-snooping satnav could push down UK insurance premiums
The idea has been hovering in the ether for some time, but TomTom is the first satnav firm to sign on the dotted line and bring insurance to drivers through their GPS. The Dutch company has joined up with Motaquote insurers to offer UK drivers "Fair Pay" insurance, where customers pay lower premiums because their satnav …
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Thursday 9th February 2012 14:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
I wonder how long it will take people to realise that their premiums will continue to rise, only now, when questioned, the call centre drone on the phone will blame the increases on the "mysterious and secret computer algorithm" that "analyses" your driving style and spits out a in increased premium.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 17:22 GMT BristolBachelor
@BlinkenLights
Absolutely, and this bit is totally crap: "... or have to brake suddenly"
So does that mean if a child runs out in front of me not looking, I get a lower premium for not braking suddenly, even though it means I hit them?
Oh and I hope that TomTom have updated their maps at last. I had to turn off the stupid "you are going too fast alarm" because they had the speed limits wrong in places and it would suddenly say the limit is 30 in the middle of a 60 stretch!
On the other hand, I have been very tempted by the devices that you fit to the car to record your jouneys to use in the event that some plonker drives into the side of you on the motorway (at least he admitted responsibility).
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 17:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
It wont pick up on the people who manage to smash into your parked car in tescos car park either.
It also wont be able to tell the difference between a relatively safe "spirited drive" in a well maintained sports car driven by a middle aged advanced police driver compared to a 17year old ragging the crap out of a never been serviced 1.2 corsa trying to impress his mates around the A roads.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 17:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
"It also wont be able to tell the difference between a relatively safe "spirited drive" in a well maintained sports car driven by a middle aged advanced police driver compared to a 17year old ragging the crap out of a never been serviced 1.2 corsa trying to impress his mates around the A roads."
Won't they? They presumably will know the age and model of car, its location, its speed.
Maybe for their purposes there is not a significant difference beyond that, regardless of driver qualifications (or maybe those will obtain a proportional discount on premiums).
Whatever, it's a commercial venture and if it doesn't convince, don't give it your money.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 17:04 GMT Timmay
@ DJ 2
"lose signal and then recover it 10 mins later, they record that you broke the speed of light by moving instantaneously"
Umm, 10 minutes or instantaneous, which is it? If you're doing 30mph and lose signal in one place and pick it up 10 minutes later 5 miles away, that's still an average speed of 30mph, not "faster than the speed of light".
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Thursday 9th February 2012 11:07 GMT Hnk0
If you have corners AND drive at 30mph max, then your average over the same time will be LOWER than if you're driving in a straight line.
Say your drive A to B is 2 miles and 10 min, that's 12mph average (you live in London and there is no traffic). The GPS is borked and thinks you drove in a straight line between A and B, 1 mile in 10 min, average speed 6mph average. Ta-da, no premium to be paid.
That said I have had my GPS record me running very briefly at 60mph round a track once, so I do hope there is some sanity-checking in place.
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Thursday 9th February 2012 12:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Sanity checking?
Don't be silly. That wouldn't give them t he out that they want.
"If you have corners AND drive at 30mph max, then your average over the same time will be LOWER than if you're driving in a straight line."
You mean, I CAN'T go around corners and along a straight at the same speed? My car must be better than I thought, as it manages to go around corners without my lifting off - with nary a squeal of tyres or hairy moments.
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Thursday 9th February 2012 17:00 GMT DJ 2
lose signal at point A.
gain signal at point B.
One moment you are at point A, then you are at point B. = distance traveled in 0 time.
or if it worked by using average speed in a straight line, they would get you for driving over fields, into that local pub on the corner, and across the duck pond.
joke because that's what it was originally ;)
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 16:41 GMT Velv
Like all statistical data used by actuaries it will take time to build the data models. Not every driver who drives fast is dangerous. Not every driver who drives smoothly can see properly. It doesn't take account of actual road conditions or driver ability, all factors that can contribute to accidents.
Overall, this will not "push down" premiums. The overall cost of insurance is likely to remain static. What it will do is shift who pays the higher or lower premiums. Not knocking it - just pointing out that actuaries are only as good as the data.
It should be interesting for the EU to comment on why premiums based on the statistics of driving style are OK, but premiums based on the statistics of sex (and soon age) are not OK.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 17:15 GMT Colin Miller
> It should be interesting for the EU to comment on why premiums based on the statistics of driving style are OK, but premiums based on the statistics of sex (and soon age) are not OK.
Because you can do something about your driving-style, but it's impossible to do anything about your age, and not many people would want to do something about their sex just to reduce their premiums.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 20:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
I have a cunning plaaaaan...
"Like all statistical data used by actuaries it will take time to build the data models."
Making now the perfect time to get one. If enough people get one fitted and then drive like loons within the law and the statistics will make everyone thereafter look like Mother Theresa.... but alive. Unclassified roads would be ideal for this as they're largely 60mph zones and you'll need to use the brakes and accelerator a lot. Your fuel and tyre consumption will be crap but it would be offset by your insurance a few years down the line.
In case your wondering, this 'plan' comes from someone who's written off* a Micra in a head on crash on a slimy single track road. It was interesting driving a car with a bent chassis the remaining 5 miles home. Got a stiff neck for a couple of days :|
*as in a "Your vehicle is worth sod and it will cost slightly more than sod all to fix it so we've written it off" write off.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 20:36 GMT Graham Dawson
Steve Renouf, what makes you believe they're talking about a blind corner? There are plenty of corners that can be safely driven at a speed appropriate to the road conditions and the tolerances of the car without the risk of hitting someone, as the corner is not blocking your line of sight. Such corners would easily topple a Smart (or that ugly, top-heavy range rooney everyone seems to be driving nowadays) but which could easily and safely be navigated at much higher speed by other cars.
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Thursday 9th February 2012 15:47 GMT alexh2o
Wow judging by the voting here, IT professional =/= automotive engineers!
Showing a very basic lack of understanding about how cars perform, and even just driving, if you fail to see why a Ford Puma can corner safely, faster than a Smart Car. It's not actually worth bothering trying to explain if it isn't just strikingly obvious to you. GCSE Physics? CoG? Moments? Friction? Ringing any bells...
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Thursday 9th February 2012 13:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
yes that was my first thought as well
The Police alredy have access to number plate auto recognition cameras throughout the road network though. I read a story about some guy that drove around the m25 for 2 days as he was lost, they used number plate recognition cameras to locate him after he wa reported missing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police-enforced_ANPR_in_the_UK
I dont really like it but it seems that this is where everything is leading.
On the safety side of things, whilst driving in the snow the other day, i slid down a hill unable to slow down and only just able to control my direction, the bloody hill had a speed camera at the bottom (30mph limit) and i went through it at about 35/40mph which was terrifying (i think, the spedo was not accurate since i had no traction) I''m pretty sure it flashed although i was concentrating quite hard on not crashing.
So when the auto generated ticket comes my way i'm probably going to have to pay it and take the points when i suspect a human police officer would probably understand that i had no choice but to go down the hill faster than anyone would have liked.
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Thursday 9th February 2012 19:12 GMT Keep Refrigerated
Actually...
You write back asking for the photographic evidence. When (if) they send it, you examine the visibility of the license plate (was it snowing?), the road markings (used by experts to determine actual speed of travel if in doubt).
Road markings were covered in snow you say?
And if you don't feel like arguing the technicalities, you always have the option of appealing to a Magistrate, who is a real person, and will likely take such circumstances into consideration.
We should never fear appealing to a court, since that is our right. It is there to protect you, not the establishment; it is the last thing that stops the country from slipping into a police state.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 16:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
One wonders if the satnav will penalise you
for blindly obeying its own directions to drive up a dead-end dirt track and off a cliff?
@MarvinOGBF - having worked for a vehicle tracking outfit, the lengths to which 'professional' drivers will go to to disable the equipment foisted on them by the bullshit middle-managers our bullshit sales teams sold to would intrigue and amaze with their resourcefulness. Knowing exactly which low bridge would wipe out the appropriate antenna whilst leaving the rest of the vehicle unharmed was just one example.
@Blinken - and since the system is selective in its application they won't have a suitable random data set to base their calculations on, so what the system deems 'safe driving' is purely speculative. That means they'll be struggling to find an underwriter to genuinely offer lower premiums on the basis of anything other than people who think they're safer drivers coming forward.
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Wednesday 8th February 2012 16:57 GMT g e
They will
You just know it. Or, charge a massive amount for not doing it.
Nothing to hide? Nothing to fear.
It would be nice if one day insurance companies could afford computers that could count into double digits for no claims years, too. Given the premiums they charge you'd think they could support no claims back to the birth of the Universe by now.
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Thursday 9th February 2012 11:16 GMT peter 45
"insurance companies could afford computers that could count into double digits for no claims years, too."
Yeh, and managed to sort out the no-claims information they give you at the end of the year and the information they insist on to take out insurance.
Last insurance company I went with would only give an 'over 5 years' type of information at the end of the year, but their insurance quote form insisted on an exact number of years (and would then only allow 5 years if you got an 'over 5 years' statement.)
I have not had a claim for over 10 years, but can now only claim 6 because of this .
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Thursday 9th February 2012 11:50 GMT Vic
> I have not had a claim for over 10 years, but can now only claim 6 because of this .
I sometimes wonder about the whole "no claims" thing.
I had about 15 years accrued without claiming. Strangely, the premium never seemed to go down.
Then I got rid of my car - I did <1000 miles one year, so it just wasn't worth keeping.
I bought a van last year. But because it's been more than 2 years since I last had a policy, all my no-claims bonus is gone. I had to start from scratch.
I'm now driving a much bigger, heavier vehicle from the same manufacturer as my car. I have changed from a SDP policy to a commercial one And I have no NCD. Yet my premium is about the same...
Vic.
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Friday 10th February 2012 16:09 GMT Colin Miller
The GPS logger has to cross-reference your location to a road database to determine the speed limit for your current location. If you are on a private road or on a race track, it should have no entry for the speed limit, and thus not penalise you for doing 70+mph.
Melt - the idea is that once you apply for it, you can not turn the speed recording functionally off, otherwise if you wanted to speed for one journey, you'd just turn it off.
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