No discount for “oops!”
Jonathan Hick, a 21-year-old student at the University of Nottingham, likes to think of himself as independent-minded. Nonetheless, he recently let his insurance company install a system that uses satellites to track every movement his car makes.
“As soon as I heard the offer, I signed up,” said Hick, who was one of the earliest to join a pilot program in Britain by Norwich Union, an insurance unit of Aviva that calculates insurance payments based on where and when cars were actually driven.
“I pay half as much for insurance and think twice about using the car during the expensive times that are considered high risk for accidents,” Hick explained.
The insurance, which has been sold by Norwich Union since October, uses the Global Positioning System of satellites to keep track of where, when and how far a car has been driven to determine rates each month.
It does not record speed.
Lots of meat to the article. It raises questions beyond the cost and savings — like privacy.
I’m also calling my insurance agent, today, to ask when I might be able to get something like this for my pickup? He won’t have a clue.
It raises questions beyond the cost and savings — like privacy.
Do ya think?
isn’t that kind of like altering health insurance rates based on the health of the insured?
or is it just like upcharging the smokers?
I guess it’s better to have the majority of good drivers subsidize the lousy ones. And have the non-smokers subsidize health care for smokers.
I think the idea is terrific. My driving record is safer than most in my town — and this could be another way to get a discount. Why can’t American insurance companies come up with stuff like this?
[edited: comments guide]
The real-time adjustments allow for customers to decide how much risk they’re willing to pay for.
Well, like a lot of other things these days, I see this as being in the plus column for the “haves” and the minus column for the “have nots”.
It would be great for people who live and work in safe areas, who drive newer cars, are well educated and smart and otherwise more likely to take care of themselves, their families, and their posessions. In other words, people of means.
A single mother living in a high-crime area, working nights in the shabby part of town and driving an old beat up wreck (all that she can afford) will end up simply not being able to afford insurance.
Is it fair for the first person to pay higher premiums than necessary because of the second type of person? Nope. Same with health insurance. But like I said… the more fairly that risks are assigned, the less it becomes insurance and the more it becomes a pre-pay plan for the disasters that inevitably befall those are are simply less lucky, and less competent, at life.
The problem with charging ‘bad’ drivers more is how you define good and bad driving. It’s based on the point system today, which is based on tickets given out by revenue collec…uh, police officers…who might have goals not necessarily governed by safety concerns. Some of the best drivers on the road have the most points because our great nation’s concept of safety is to tell everyone “Speed Kills” and force them to watch “Blood Runs Red On The Highway” when they’re sixteen. While I could go on and on about driving in general and safety specifically, I’m going to just stop here with this: driver education in this country is a joke and the ONLY way to make the roads truly safer is to make people better drivers (i.e. put down the coffee, danish, cellphone, newspaper, mascara and freakin DRIVE, pay attention, follow the ‘rules of the road’ (not just the laws), recognize that others exist besides yourself, etc.), and comprehensive Driver’s Ed (like in Germany, or even Britain) is the only way to make that happen.
Let’s teach drivers more silly things like ‘vehicle dynamics’ and less of the truly important ‘it takes x drinks to be drunk for y body weight’ and ‘which way you should turn your wheels when parked on a hill’.
Os.
#3 – Yes. Actually it is better that way. But I suppose there are a lot of folks who stay up all night beset with worry and fear that somewhere, someone might unintentionally get a little benefit from their good fortune.
#4 – I’m just curious… How do you know that?
#5 – What could Greg have possibly said in a thread about insurance that would lead to the heavy hand of the censor being dropped on him.
#8 – You are 98% right… But I wish you hadn’t used the word competent in the last sentence. That sort of implies that competence is the factor the determins how much you will make or what fortunes will befall you… but it isn’t necassarily true.
Your single mother cannot afford a newer car and lives in a poorer area, but may in fact be highly educated and very smart, but has been forced to make compromises as a result of whatever situation lead to her being a single mother in the first place, assuming of course that it wasn’t a choice she made independently of other factors.
Hah! I just weaseled another $90 discount out of my insurance agent. And — as I expected — they’d never heard of this kind of policy.
As for #5, I think Greg may have been Commenting on the wrong post. Unless somewhere in this article Steve Jobs was quoted!? Severely OT.
Oh, and don’t get too boring with “what if” arguments. I’ll end up repeating the now-famous Ruud Gullitt “what if” quote.
Ummm… It might not record speed, but unless I passed physics without understand motion doest time, and distance give you speed? So it does record speed.
Otherwise I think this is a miserable idea since the insurance companies will have one more layer of fog to hide extra “padding” behind. How do you know that they wont change the high risk times to reflect your times because 8 people got into an accident at those times around where you drive last month so the companies have to cover their “losses?”
#15, if 8 people got into an accident in one month in one area it probably is a high risk area.
You can get breaks based on a good driving record. Good health. The type of car you have. the number of vehicals you own. Where you live.
Don’t forget good credit.
With bad credit, many of the major insurance companies (allstate, state farm for two) won’t even QUOTE you, much less write you a policy. That leaves you with one of the fly-by-night underwriters who has to overcharge because they end up with ALL of the deadbeats. Workin’ Mom takes it up the pooper again.
This is just another backdoor to entice silly masses to accept beeing tracked at every step they take… Equal to supermarket cards that give you “savings” (that you’d get from them anyway as they need to stay competitive) but track your shopping behaviour. Good drivers would enjoy similar rates, just now thay can be tracked too. Only winners are insurance companies (you don’t think they’ll sell the tracking records!?) and government (you don’t think they’ll buy …).
#16 let me rephrase that…. for six months there are fender benders here and there, and suddenly in one month it snows rains whatever, and there are 8 accidents(people in my neck of the woods think a half inch of snow is a lot). Suddenly my driving habits/patterns haven’t changed, but my bill goes up.
I’m gonna be pissed at A. the fact that I’m stuck in traffic because people can’t drive and B. because my rates went up.
#18 – and I never really understood why credit is considered for so many things where credit isn’t used… I pay insurance premiums in advance. If I pay, I’m covered. If I don’t pay, they suspend the policy and that is my fault.
Is credit used as some sort of half-assed barometer of character? If I had bad credit would I be a more dangerous driver?
One of the big name companies already offers this here in the US. I was shopping around for auto insurance a couple of months ago and there was the option during my quote to sign up for a program where they send you a component to attach to the diagnostic port on your auto. Once every while, you voluntarily, if you want the discount, connect it to your PC where it uploads data to the company. I got a better quote elsewhere, but the idea intrigued me enough to consider it.
Very relevant information here but my question is, auto insurance is totally dependent on the exact place and time of the accident, then does this mean that i have to limit my driving distance to my distance limits to avoid claims being null and void?