Talk of black boxes scoring your driving for telematics-based insurance has been
a big PH topic
recently, not least off the back of our story yesterday. Interesting to hear from some PHers who've actually used the systems too and found them less invasive than some of us might fear. Indeed, as more than one person has pointed out we've happily been running round with tracker-based alarms for years so the idea that people know where we are, or might store this info, is nothing new.
Tsk, that looks dangerously like 'fast cornering'
Since we posted the piece we've heard more from Autosaint, a provider of telematics insurance and mentioned in the story. The way they work it is by starting you with 100 points, renewed and assessed every quarter. Points are deducted for 'bad' driving and earned for 'good' driving. Your score will drop for the following: speeding, 'aggressive' acceleration, 'aggressive' braking, 'fast cornering' and more.
Funnily enough I've had my driving scored today in a very similar kind of way at Mercedes-Benz World at Brooklands. Like with an Autosaint policy I started with a brace of points, facing deductions for sloppy driving. Though, this being a closed (and greasy) track and in an AMG, I was glad I had a Mercedes instructor marking me and not an automated black box. Mainly because there was quite a lot of aggressive acceleration and braking, not to mention a fair bit of fast cornering, not all of it facing forwards. Autosaint-praising testimonial provider Ian Skidmore would have been proud!
Worse, Mercedes was scoring us on our performance on a live board in a room full of the other hacks. Nowhere to hide. How did I do? Er, well ... I'm a little rusty ... and ... I was fourth, right. Must try harder.
In all seriousness I'm interested to see how I'd do with an Autosaint box on the road too. Better hopefully. We're going to give one a go and see how it ranks us. This could be interesting!