[Article] Pay-as-you-drive insurance

pan

Interest article, UK based!
Seem it might be implemented within the next 2 yrs.
I wonder how long before something like this is available here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3574010.stm

bringitdown

I have always wondered about summat like this.

Like you should have 3rd Party, F+T ALL the time (as your car can still get fupped even if it is parked outside your door) but only pay for fully comprehensive whilst actually driving...

mike65

bringitdown wrote:

I have always wondered about summat like this.

Like you should have 3rd Party, F+T ALL the time (as your car can still get fupped even if it is parked outside your door) but only pay for fully comprehensive whilst actually driving...

I think in Austrailia you have basic cover just by owning a car/driving licence anything more you pay for...

Mike.

bringitdown

mike65 wrote:

I think in Austrailia you have basic cover just by owning a car/driving licence anything more you pay for...

Mike.

In Oz, basically the state government operates the 3rd Party insurance (AFAIK this is strictly cover for 3rd Party injury) and this is all that is required to hit the road. As Mike says anything else you want you pay extra for. You pay it as part of the REGO (~more or less car registration tax).

Irish 3rd Party, Fire + Theft is quite a bit more cover than the Oz notion.

However it is an interesting approach.

sliabh

So how does it work then for the sort of person that drives like sh*t and has loads of accidents (boy racers I am looking at you)?

Unless there is some sort of loading for them the rest of us would end up subsidising the dangerous drivers.

EvilDoctorK

I think I read somewhere that they have something similar to the Australian model in New Zealand except that it is explicitly funded in the tax on Petrol sales .. therefore the more you drive the more you pay.

Interesting idea for sure

Major plus point - you get rid of the problems with unisnured drivers

Major minus point - As above everyone pays the same ... you'll therefore have problems with not being able to reward safe records/punish bad records.

I don't know how this works in Oz/NZ .. would be interested to find out how they deal with the negative points.

gobby

Regarding the GPS system.

I guess with this type of system it would also be possible to tell if somebody regularly breaks speed limits. I wonder would they alter insurance based on this?

John R

gobby wrote:

Regarding the GPS system.

I guess with this type of system it would also be possible to tell if somebody regularly breaks speed limits. I wonder would they alter insurance based on this?

With this type of system it would be possible to track and store all kinds of personal info. I am sure they would downplay this aspect at first to encourage takeup then when everyone is stuck with it every second of your driving would be analyzed and reported to the authorities, as well as being added to your bill.

A large amount of the British public seem to be in a mad rush to adopt every needlesly invasive technology available without a second thought to the reprecussions, stupid sheep that they are.

George Orwell must be spinning so fast they could dig him up and use him as a tunnel boring machine.

bringitdown

Invasive it is, and it is not really pay-as-you-go it is more: pay-as-you-try-to-avoid-roads-that-are-deemed-risky-whilst-trying-to-keep-the-car-under-60mph.

What is to stop them doing the same using that thing in the dash, the um, odometer? My preference would be for mileage/speed based scheme. The more you drive the more you pay. Speed limit breakages would be recorded on a 'black box' rather than using the invasive GPS method.

Of course GPS allows them to determine if you do 50 in a 30 zone, a non GPS solution does not, catch 22?

WRT the Oz question you are liable to pay damages of course from your own pocket it you crash into someone with just the 3rd Party.

sliabh

There isn't really a problem with adopting new techologies, even invasive ones provided adequate adequate oversight is in place as well.

I have no problems with id-cards, Garda cc-tv cameras, logging of my mobile phone location and so on provided appropriate checks and balances are in place to ensure they are not being abused. Too often this debate is set up in terms of a black and white either-or. Big brother vs state security.

If the data is held seperate (and securely) to the state bodies that wish to use it, the state requests are only approved and reviewed by independent bodies (like the courts), and if citizens have the right to reivew the data held of them, correct inaccurate data, and if we have the right of redress when the data is abused then I don't see what the worry is.

Not that I expect my shopping list of balances to be granted anytime soon though :-)

John R

sliabh wrote:

There isn't really a problem with adopting new techologies, even invasive ones provided adequate adequate oversight is in place as well.

I have no problems with id-cards, Garda cc-tv cameras, logging of my mobile phone location and so on provided appropriate checks and balances are in place to ensure they are not being abused. Too often this debate is set up in terms of a black and white either-or. Big brother vs state security.

If the data is held seperate (and securely) to the state bodies that wish to use it, the state requests are only approved and reviewed by independent bodies (like the courts), and if citizens have the right to reivew the data held of them, correct inaccurate data, and if we have the right of redress when the data is abused then I don't see what the worry is.

Not that I expect my shopping list of balances to be granted anytime soon though :-)

That is a nice theory but it is bull in the real world. even if there are legal safeguards it doesn't stop particular parties from obtaining and using the ingormation anyway, just look at the British security forces illegal phone tapping of Irish calls through britian for example.

sliabh

John R wrote:

just look at the British security forces illegal phone tapping of Irish calls through britian for example.

That was an extra territorial thing (phone taps are not submisible in UK courts). And you can never control what other countries do to spy on you. Echelon is a good example.

But in this case we are talking about the more mundane national tracking by your own government, the tracking of everyone's vehicle (or veh-he-cule in Garda parlance) by some state body.

It's like the Garda CCTV cameras around towns. They do reduce crime (at least in the areas where they are installed) but people are concerned about the privacy implications. So to balance both you put in place appropriate checks on the use of the cameras.

I don't think we have that at the moment, but we need it. Both for the existing survelance technologies and proposed ones.

I want to hear of a Guard getting suspended for using a CCTV to track a pretty girl around town! :-)

Zaph0d

I can't imagine that having a tracker in your car would ever become obligatory but it is likely that nearly everyone will have one in a few years...

It would start with most lower mileage drivers volunteering for a tracker if they thought they could save a few hundred euro. Privacy concerns are unlikely to deter given that the mobile phone companies know where you are all day, not just when you're driving.

In a few years it could be the case that all the low mileage, daytime only, safe road, speed limit abiding drivers choose to be tracked. Now if you don't opt to have a tracker in your car, that's fine but your premium will be huge.

If new toll roads and bridges and car parks start to operate with the tracker, it could become something almost indispensable like a credit card or mobile phone.

If it changed peoples behaviour by getting them to drive less or more slowly it would be a good thing.

The tracking data should be held by an independent escrow company and only released as legally allowed and with the knowledge of the insured. Mobile phone historic tracking data and ISP connection logs should also be managed in this way.

ChipZilla

John R wrote:

A large amount of the British public seem to be in a mad rush to adopt every needlesly invasive technology available without a second thought to the reprecussions, stupid sheep that they are.

Where the UK leads, Ireland always follows. :eek:

Capt'n Midnight

Listening to Radio 4 the UK system will not penalise for speeding !

The Irish system GPS already in place DOES measure speeding so it's the UK who have to catch up on the Big Brother side. But of course Irish drivers don't get discount for not driving between midnight and 4am..

John R

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Listening to Radio 4 the UK system will not penalise for speeding !

It might not penalise yet but it would record speed and adding that as a penalty could be done whenever they wished. With the over use of speed cameras and the bad feeling they cause over there I would say they are leaving speed off the system because it would make it very unpopular. Once it is established it is simply a matter of ticking the [fcuk everyone over everytime they go 1mph over a speed limit] box on the software.

sliabh

John R wrote:

Once it is established it is simply a matter of ticking the [fcuk everyone over everytime they go 1mph over a speed limit] box on the software.

It would be a lot harder than that. You need to know what road the person is on and what the local speed limit for that is. And as the German road tolling system has shown GPS is not really good enough for that. They are finding drivers on side roads are being tolled for driving on nearby motorways.

Not too surprising when you consider the inherent inaccuracy in GPS (depending on conditions up to 25m out).

Even from a implementation point of view it would be quite a logistical feat to map all the roads and speed limits in the country and keep it up to date.

Victor

sliabh wrote:

It would be a lot harder than that. You need to know what road the person is on and what the local speed limit for that is. And as the German road tolling system has shown GPS is not really good enough for that. They are finding drivers on side roads are being tolled for driving on nearby motorways. Not too surprising when you consider the inherent inaccuracy in GPS (depending on conditions up to 25m out). Even from a implementation point of view it would be quite a logistical feat to map all the roads and speed limits in the country and keep it up to date.

Then the German system isn't working. Ireland's roads and speed limits are already mapped (it's rather easy as most coincide with town boundaries) and I've seen taxi drivers with GPS systems that do know whether they are on 1st street instead of 2nd street. In addition DGPS (a series of UK and Irish coastguard ground stations feeding into the GPS constellation) and Gallileo both have accuracies of 1m.

sliabh

Victor wrote:

Then the German system isn't working.

It isn't, that's the problem.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3500269.stm

It's a major political embarassment.

Alun

Victor wrote:

Then the German system isn't working. Ireland's roads and speed limits are already mapped (it's rather easy as most coincide with town boundaries) and I've seen taxi drivers with GPS systems that do know whether they are on 1st street instead of 2nd street. In addition DGPS (a series of UK and Irish coastguard ground stations feeding into the GPS constellation) and Gallileo both have accuracies of 1m.

Actually, the DGPS network doesn't feed back into the GPS satellite constellation, but the signal is transmitted on a separate terrestrial radio frequency, for which you need a separate DGPS receiver that attaches to your existing GPS reciever, usually via a serial port. Furthermore there is only a guaranteed reception radius of 50 NM around the coast, since the service is primarily aimed at marine users. You'll be lucky to get 1m accuracy for a moving vehicle too, although for stationary applications you may be OK. There is EGNOS, the european version of WAAS, which is a sort of (wide area) DGPS, but that (still) isn't operational yet, and in theory you may be able to get as good as 3m accuracy assuming you can actually receive the signal, since the satellite(s) involved are in a geostationary orbit, and therefore quite low on the horizon at these latitudes.

Anyway, the problems with the German toll system are many fold, and aren't necessarily all to do with GPS, or even the technology at all. There are all kinds of scandals surrounding the original tender process and contract hand-out, and much political in-fighting betwen the various sub-contractors. I've got a very lengthy series of articles (in german!) about it all if anyone's interested!