What does telematics insurance entail?
As our automotive industry has seen advancements in technology, which has paved the way for one type of insurance policy that’s become highly popular for many drivers.
This is telematics car insurance.
Before you decide to take out your own policy, it’s first important to understand insurance telematics for cars and what it might entail for you as a driver.
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What is telematics insurance for your car?
Telematics is the name of technology that can monitor and analyze your driving as a means of giving you a more appropriate price for your insurance premiums.
Insurers will use telematics to reveal various aspects of your driving behavior, so they can determine how safe you are on the road, and how likely you are to be involved in an accident. This gives them the information necessary to adjust your insurance premiums, helping you save money through safer driving.
How does telematics insurance work?
In order for telematics to work, you must have the technology installed in your car. This is usually done via a chip in your car windshield, or an application that’s installed on your mobile device. For the latter to work, you must keep your phone’s location services active at all times.
Once you have the technology in your car, it will use telecommunications (cellular networks, cables, phone lines) and informatics (computer systems) to transmit the essential data to your insurer, so they can organize and review it.
If you’re using an application on your phone, this will involve the use of your phone’s motion sensors to gain accurate and consistent data on your driving.
The type of data collected and sent off from your driving will cover a wide variety of driving aspects. This includes things such as:
- Speed limits – The system will be able to determine the speed you’re driving at on the road, and match this against the designated speed limit for the area, to see if you’re within the legal limit. Since this is a location-based software, it does this by using global positioning system (GPS), to determine where you are on the road, and the accompanying speed limit.
- Executing maneuvers – Your telematics will also be able to identify how safely you execute a variety of maneuvers. For example, it will notice how well you carry out your turns, i.e., are you swinging the vehicle around the corner too fast? Also, it can see whether you’re reversing into any obstacles when you park.
- Stopping – Once again, the motion sensors and GPS software will be able to assess how safely you’re stopping the car. For example, the system will know if you had to brake harshly at the last minute, indicating that you didn’t pay attention and slow down in a safer manner. The telematics can use GPS to very accurately record even the slightest movements and distance travelled when braking on the road.
- Time of driving – It’s a statistical fact that driving in the late hours of the day, when it’s much darker, leads to a higher chance of being involved in an accident. Therefore, your telematics can assess the times of the day you’re driving, and how often you make journeys in the later, less desirable times of day.
By collecting this data, your software can produce a clear and accurate picture for your insurer, where they’ll see just how safe you’re driving when you’re on the road, and take into account all the information above that’s provided by the technology.
As a result, you’ll then be given a more accurate cost for your car premiums, that reflects how you drive.
The safer you drive – the lower your premiums will be!