We're always a bit dubious about so-called 'black box' insurance devices in cars, which monitor your driving and send regular reports back to your insurers in return for a reduced premium. Surely it's better to train younger drivers to simply be good drivers, and encourage their up-skilling rather than just putting a monitor and tracker on them?
Evidence that they work
Whatever our feelings though, there does seem to be some evidence that such devices work, and can significantly reduce the rate of accidents suffered by young drivers - the group most at risk on our roads, and in a manner that has been so tragically highlighted of late.
According to MCL Insurance - an Irish insurance group that includes such brands as Its4women, GetSetGo, and BoxyMo - its black box telematics systems show a verifiable reduction in accident-related claims from young drivers.
MCL's data, taken from 50,000 policies across the years 2015 to 2022 show an overall reduction in accident-related claims of 27 per cent, and an even more stark reduction of 48 per cent when it comes to claims that involve physical injuries. The research also shows that 'speeding events' dropped by a dramatic 72 per cent per policy.
Reduce the risk of serious injury or death
MCL claims that: "These decreases are very good news for policy-holders in demonstrating the benefits of telematics in encouraging safer driving and helping to reduce their risk of serious injury, or perhaps even death, on our roads."
Jean Hellewell, Managing Director of MCL Insurance, said: "It's no secret that young drivers have the highest number of accidents. But young drivers are not all the same. Using telematics technology, our black boxes constantly measure the big five risk factors for young drivers, alerting them to potential risks and positively influencing their driving habits. It's thanks to Axon Telematics, which developed our telematics technology, that we are able to reveal these findings at a time when we focus on Irish Road Safety Week 2023. This event is a very important social awareness campaign that aims to reduce the number of road deaths in Ireland and we are delighted to be able to say that our relationship with Axon, and the analytics that it provides us with, can help support that goal."
Support young drivers
Ms Hellewell said MCL Insurance's telematics offering was developed to support young drivers in getting on the road, while also allowing them access to competitive insurance that rewards safe driving.
She adds: "Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach when risk-assessing young drivers, by allowing their driving to be monitored, our customers can be treated as individuals in line with their real-world driving behaviour. It means that premiums are no longer based solely on factors such as age, but rather are informed by data from telematics technology, thus enabling significant discounts to be offered to young motorists who drive safely."