Mr Notso Savvy the spy in your car.
The AA are the latest and largest insurer to announce a scheme using sat-nav technology to monitor users driving habits to help set their insurance premium. The device will not only monitor speeds, but also braking severity, typesof road used and cornering.This will supposedly give a complete map of an individuals driving style allowing the AA to set an insurance premium tailored to this style. The system will also send e-mails to users warning them if their driving habits are going to increase their premium.
On the face of it this looks wonderful, you will only pay according to your actual risk of being in an accident based on your driving style, but wait a minute aren't their one or two little glitches in this.
Technically sat-nav technology has improved hugely over the last ten years, but my eleven month old system still often shows me travelling 'off road' or on a nearby road. Lets say I am on a dual carriageway adhering to the correct speed limit of 70mph at say 65mph, but our fallible friend Mr.Notso-Savvy has me on the nearby B road that has a speed limit of only 40mph. The AA will obviously not be too happy about this apparent disregard for speed limits and punish me accordingly. Imagine this being on my daily commute, my insurance premium would rocket upwards. Other technical issues are, what happens in bad weather when sat-navs cant always contact enough satellites to get accurate data, and then their actual calculation of speed which in my experience has never matched the speed on my speedometer.
My Other major bug bear with his system is data integrity, who will have access to all of this data . Obviously the AA wont allow just anyone access, but what about other insurance quotes could this data be passed on to another department in the AA, or how about credit checks and then of course legal investigations. This leads me to consider the data base getting hacked, accounts could be muddled, new parameters set for driving standards for example increasing premiums if a driver is travelling under the speed limit. The most likely outcome of a successful hack though is that all of your data would be plonked on the internet where everyone could peruse your frequent visits to the local red light district and wrongly conclude you are a pervert and not a health worker.
Finally what happens to those of us who don’t want this system, at least what happens to our insurance premiums. Will my ten years no claims count for nothing, will I be punished once again for not believing that a big company out to make big profits wont manipulate us in every possible way to ensure they keep on making big profits.
On the face of it this looks wonderful, you will only pay according to your actual risk of being in an accident based on your driving style, but wait a minute aren't their one or two little glitches in this.
Technically sat-nav technology has improved hugely over the last ten years, but my eleven month old system still often shows me travelling 'off road' or on a nearby road. Lets say I am on a dual carriageway adhering to the correct speed limit of 70mph at say 65mph, but our fallible friend Mr.Notso-Savvy has me on the nearby B road that has a speed limit of only 40mph. The AA will obviously not be too happy about this apparent disregard for speed limits and punish me accordingly. Imagine this being on my daily commute, my insurance premium would rocket upwards. Other technical issues are, what happens in bad weather when sat-navs cant always contact enough satellites to get accurate data, and then their actual calculation of speed which in my experience has never matched the speed on my speedometer.
My Other major bug bear with his system is data integrity, who will have access to all of this data . Obviously the AA wont allow just anyone access, but what about other insurance quotes could this data be passed on to another department in the AA, or how about credit checks and then of course legal investigations. This leads me to consider the data base getting hacked, accounts could be muddled, new parameters set for driving standards for example increasing premiums if a driver is travelling under the speed limit. The most likely outcome of a successful hack though is that all of your data would be plonked on the internet where everyone could peruse your frequent visits to the local red light district and wrongly conclude you are a pervert and not a health worker.
Finally what happens to those of us who don’t want this system, at least what happens to our insurance premiums. Will my ten years no claims count for nothing, will I be punished once again for not believing that a big company out to make big profits wont manipulate us in every possible way to ensure they keep on making big profits.