OT: motor insurance question

I would assume that the black box is linked to satnav and the car's speedometer. So it "knows" what the speed limit is on that particular stretch of road, and what the car's actual speed was at the time.

What the insurers can and can't do will appear somewhere in the small print of the insurance policy and any endorsements.

If it were my policy, I would have looked by now :-)

These days the "black box" is a simple tag that is fitted to the windscreen behind the rear view mirror. It an internal accelerometer and it connects to the drivers mobile phone via Bluetooth, and the app (which the insured (and any other drivers) are obliged to have installed) will form the link back to big brother at the insurer.

They will use metrics like the rate of acceleration / braking, cornering g forces from the accelerometer and GPS data from the phone with location and road restriction data from the likes of google maps etc to monitor the driving. A GPS speed exceeding the limit identified by the map data for the location (or the map limit being wrong) would trigger a notification to the driver's account. Also mobile phone use while driving would get a big black mark.

Basically if they don't like the driving, they will award black marks and an admonishment. (you can appeal if you think there was and error), accumulate enough black marks and they will raise your insurance price. If bad enough they will cancel your insurance and mark you as someone who has been refused insurance. Counter to that, if you are deemed "good" they may lower your insurance prices. (often paid in monthly instalments taken by DD)

Thank you for this informative explanation.

I've never had this sort of policy, but my understanding is that there is frequent feedback to the driver, so as to get them to improve their driving.

There's no reason at all why the monthly premium should remain fixed, and indeed it would make perfect sense to increase the monthly premium if there's evidence of poor driving, and vv.

Unfortunately, by asking on usenet, you're asking completely the wrong age group. I doubt there's anyone on usenet under 60.

Oi, cheek! (still under 60 - for a bit longer at least)

(although old enough to have a son who needed to get his first insurance from one of the outfits that require telematics - so I have some experience with it)

It's well documented what these policies are about.

cheeky bustard

I am only 54!

A rephrase to "I doubt there's anyone on usenet under 25" would have mollified all posters.

Yes, I use hexadecimal too.

John Rumm snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.null wrote: . Also mobile phone use while

How do they know the phone is being used by the driver? A person wanting to stay within the law might well hand their phone to their passenger who sends and receives the calls, messages etc.

GH

They don't know, so they assume it is, provide a mechanism to challenge the assumption.

Indeed.

Another complication is that if there are multiple drivers on the insurance (say child and parent), both would need to pair their phone with the tag, so that when driving it can discriminate who is driving. A complication arises when both "drivers" are in the car at the same time.

We had one case where son was flagged for mobile use while driving when I used *my* phone as a passenger. Not sure if the tag has paired with my phone first rather than his, or if it was just a limitation of the system. (again he could respond to the incident on the web site later to explain)