With over a million cars being fitted with telematics boxes, also known as black boxes, by insurance companies, there is now plenty of data which shows exactly how British motorists are driving and can help people to think of ways to make the roads safer for all who use them.
What do they do and who uses them?
Billions of miles have been travelled by cars fitted with a telematics device over the last decade and they can gather data on a variety of factors including speed, cornering, braking and accelerating, plus pinpoint the type of road that the individual is driving on.
These boxes have predominantly been used by new drivers in a bid to prove that they are sensible behind the wheel so that their insurance premiums go down over time, but people of all ages and experience can have one fitted in their vehicle.
Britain’s largest telematics insurance provider, Insurethebox, has gathered 3 billion miles worth of driving data and associated claims since 2010, and along with similar providers Marmalade and Coverbox they have shared this to reveal information about the “real driving habits” of British motorists.
Evidence that has been gathered
The data has shown that 17-year-old drivers who have just started their driving experience are actually safer than 18 and 19-year-olds who have held their licenses for a bit longer. This could be because new drivers are still getting used to driving and are being more cautious, whereas those who are slightly older have had time to gain confidence which is why their driving deteriorates over the age of 18.
Those with 2 – 3 years of driving experience under their belt are the worst speeding offenders, whereas 17-year-olds actually drive at a relatively modest speed.
The difference between how males and females drive has always been a hot topic of conversation, and black boxes have supported the myth that women drive more carefully, at lower speeds, and have fewer accidents than men. Their average claim also costs less at £2345 compared to £2566 but, due to EU rules, insurance companies aren’t allowed to base their quotes on gender like they used to.
Conclusions
The most dangerous road type for young drivers are country roads with a 60mph speed limit as it is often not safe to drive anywhere close to 60mph but a lack of experience means that this is not always understood. With narrow lanes, blind corners and slow-moving vehicles to contend with these roads are actually more dangerous than the motorways that so many new drivers are scared to use.
Gov.uk data has shown that 80% of young driver fatalities occur on rural roads so it is important that those new to driving understand that just because the road signs show 60mph it doesn’t mean that it is safe to drive at that speed.
It has also been found that a driver’s behaviour leading up to an accident is often erratic from the moment that they leave the house. This suggests that if people have had an argument or are feeling frustrated when they get into their vehicle it could have a negative effect on their driving which results in them having an accident.
Getting a quote
Occupation is also taken into consideration when working out insurance quotes, and telematics data has supported this by showing that motor racing drivers and funfair employees are among the most risky drivers whereas NHS workers are among the safest on the roads. It was also found that gamers are relatively safe drivers whereas those who read as a hobby are often more risky.
As well as providing an interesting insight into “real driving habits” black boxes can save young drivers up to 37% on their car insurance if they drive carefully and follow the laws of the roads, and 40% of new motorists are already taking advantage of this in a bid to reduce their insurance premium.
(Image credit – InsureTheBox)
Would you be willing to have a black box fitted to monitor your driving behaviour and iron out any bad habits? Let us know in the comments below.
I would be willing but don’t know where to get one
If it saves us Money and we have nothing to worry about, What’s the problem? I would as well, but my present Insurrer said I didn’t need one, as I haven’t made a claim for a long time, and drive a car that I am more likely to want to look after.
So you are going to take the word of others it is going to bring down your premiums each and every year? What a trusting soul you are! Insurers love you.
A good review, although lane dodging, overtaking on the inside, pulling out in front of oncoming vehicles, poor parking and not checking mirrors may not be recorded
Although I appreciate they may help younger drivers drive more safely, I would not be keen to have one installed. As with everything else in our lives, the data collected can be sold on and used to show a lot more than just how you drive. If I want to be tagged, then I will ask for an ankle tag….Big Brother in the car and big companies dictating what I can and can’t do…..no thanks!
So you don’t think your Car gathers this Info in any case? It has the ability!
Bit of a wild statement, considering you have no idea what car Paul drives. How has a car without an ECU got the ability to collect data?
There are millions of cars on our roads still managing quite well without complex electronics.
If you read his response he says, if you are concerned about data collection you should never buy BMW or similar…….. he doesn’t say the author has one!!
With observation like that maybe telematics is for you afterall, or to help the rest of us!!
It’s not so much big brother as just collecting data. why would anyone want to know what you are doing ( unless you are up to no good). I would willingly have one, I already have a dash cam. Anything that can improve the very poor standard of driving is very welcome as far as I’m concerned.
Naive in the extreme! 🙁
There are those who take a delight in setting other people up – or even creating malware to make other’s lives hard.
Be careful with dashcams, they are increasingly being used by the authorities to prove their owners misdemeanours as well as those around them!
I appreciate the concern, but assume you don’t use an Android or Apple phone, which collects much more info about your life than any car black box will ever do!! Of course, when signing up for anything you need to read the small print. Under the data protection act companies cannot release personal data unless a customer has signed to agree it’s release. And anyone concerned about companies collecting telemetry data on the way they drive should never buy a BMW, or host of other modern cars, as they collect exactly the same information, and feed it back to the manufacturer via in cast GSM modules, for analysis!
I don’t have an android or apple phone and I will never be able to afford a BMW – currently I have a 13 year old diesel and when that goes what will I be able to afford?
As for data protection – I have just had an email wishing me Happy New Year and offering me groupage services across the Black Sea and also between Turkey and Central Asia – any ideas how this happened?
Biggest driver problem on the roads is caused by mobile phone usage, and visually following sat. navs/on-board computers. These drivers are so busy looking at screens that they are not actually concentrating on the road. Either these need to be non-visual or drivers need to learn how to read road signs. .
I drive a school minibus for my local authority. I agree Lesley I’ve been watching drivers using mobile phones while driving for years. I have a high vantage point so I can see the phones through the side mirrors and rear view mirrors. I can see the blue glow on their dashboard and watch them pick up or put mobiles’s down after a call etc.. When the law changed recently to increase penalties, I saw less of it for a while but I’d say it’s as bad as it ever was now. Texting between their legs while their eyes are down. Putting the mobile on their shoulder and tilting their heads, using facebook at traffic lights etc etc. You name it I see it every day. It’s not always younger drivers and many times the perpetrator has a dash cam set up but it won’t record them using their phones when there’s an accident. I’m glad this article appeared in my email because I’ve just sent it to my 27 year old Son who had a black box fitted yesterday after passing his test in November. He’s an overconfident young man and I fear he’ll only learn after he burns his fingers (as per usual). Just hope he gets off lightly because he’ll expect me to repair the car because I’ve got tools and a driveway hahaha. I just hope he reads it objectively.
I use a SATNAV when travelling in an area that I don’t know but have it out of sight. What I do have in front of me is a HUD speedometer. To save money, my Picasso has the speed display in the centre well off to the left. On top of that it is impossible to see when the sun is bright. The HUD is visible at all but sun in your eyes. Also, because it’s in front of me and just below eye level, I find that it keeps me to the speed limit.
What is a HUD?
Instead of looking at the massive map books that my parents used to while driving?
So they suggest that women are more sensible behind the wheel? Could this not be to do with how many black boxes happen to be fitted to cars driven by women, as opposed to cars driven by men? And that not all insurance companies partake of this survey? I have to say, that in my area, most of the worst drivers around me are not men at all, and that I often take lifts in other people’s cars, and generally feel perfectly safe, regardless of whether the driver is a man or a woman. So such data obviously has not been collected from this area. I am not being biased, I am merely stating my own observations. I do not see how an optional black box’s statistics can mean anything in this respect. Unless 100% of all cars are fitted with these, and that exactly 50% of all drivers at all times are men, and 50%women, such surveys are entirely worthless. I should also point out, that the volume of vehicles driven by women here is much, much higher. It is nearly always women who drive their children to and from school, there are more women drivers parking at the three supermarkets I visit (at any one day of the week), and fewer women in my area take advantage of public transport, leaving their car in the garage. You cannot convince me that sufficient data from black boxes has been collected, in order to represent both sexes’ driving habits entirely fairly.
I live near a school where the speed limit is 20mph for a considerable distance each side. In the six years that I have lived here, I have noticed that a huge amount of speedsters are young women. They are often tail-gaters,too.
tend to agree with you Dave. Gender is no longer an indication of how good or bad a driver is.
Somehow I doubt the women drivers who speed past me on a frequent basis are the ones with these boxes fitted in their car. I think the data refers to younger female drivers who have just passed their test.
What a pointless article. It tells us the driving habits of young drivers and then not in anymore detail than the stats provided by insurance companies.
Its more of an ad for the insurance industry desperate to get us all to install these boxes.
We already have more big brother surveillance in this country than any other European country . The last thing needed is to have big brother in the car with you.
there is an old statement “the biggest risk with any vehicle is the nut behind the wheel” irrespective of how old the nut is!
Yes, I would like a Black Box. I think it would assist in making me drive with more care and consideration, even though I believe I do that already. So long as it brings my insurance premiums down, I couldn’t care less what people or big companies know about me.
Good luck if it got your premiums down Dave. I wouldnt trust these insurers as far as I could throw them. I have fitted a dash cam and its surprising how it makes you drive just that bit more carefully knowing the police will take that as evidence if I have an accident.
Good move! Much better to provide one’s own surveillance and have at least a semblance of control over one’s own data. 🙂
Go on then, sell us down the river to big brother and ‘his’ abuse of big data!
I had a blackbox fitted with Coverbox around the ages of 40-43, as I believed it would be most economical that way as I only drove <3000 miles p/a, (and had little NCD), and also wanted to give my girlfriend lessons so included her as named driver. Fine at first but then very expensive add-on monthly premium if I went over my monthly estimated mileage. I scrapped car soon after and wouldn't go back to Coverbox, but did however build up some NCD in that time.
Good point George and something I think the article overlooked. Do all the insurers slap on a ‘penalty’ if you go over your estimate? Perhaps another good reason to avoid them.
As we all know, if we are perfectly honest with each other there are times when even the most careful and law abiding motorist (yes you advance motorists and ex police drivers too) will inadvertently exceed the speed limit even for just a fleeting moment. There are also times when an idiot pulls out of a side turning in front of you, with little warning and you have to touch the brakes with a bit more pressure than normal. As far as that box of tricks and your insurers are considered you are a BAD DRIVER and you will pay the price. So no, I wont be getting one fitted thank you, at least not until they are about 1000 times cleverer than they are now.
Spot on. Without a dash cam to contextualise what the other road users were doing around you the spy in the car is meaningless. Your comment also highlights that the idiot who pulls out of the side road probably didn’t brake hard, accelerate hard or corner violently. The black box is flawed….
My objection to these devices is that there is an excessive focus on speed in excess of the limit, which is disproportionate to the cause of accidents. Speed in excess of the limit is “a factor” in only 25% of KSI’s, this does not mean that speed was the primary cause but only that it contributed to the final outcome. The largest primary causes of “killed or seriously injured” road traffic collisions are actually inattention and errors of judgement, things that these boxes cannot measure.
As indicated in the story above government data shows that the problem is inexperience, the antidote to which is more, higher quality, training. If there really was any desire to reduce RTCs the obsession with speed would be abandoned to focus on improving driving standards.
I agree fully with you the standard of driving is shocking.
Before having boxes fitted to vehicles some people should use things that are already fitted to vehicles
Things like indicators
Totally agree with R Kingham. I’ve been driving for over 50 years and I’ve noticed a in increase in selfish drivers, no consideration for other road users. Never use indicators (especially on roundabouts), never change lanes to allow vehicles to filter in, always drives in centre lane of motorway, never moves forward in traffic holdups (forgetting that people are behind them and possibly blocking another junction) and when beeped to move with rest of traffic she (yes she) got out of car and went into a rage with the person who beeped her.
Black box is OK for those that need to reduce their insurance but, as another contributor states, some drivers just need to consider other road users.
Just did 240 miles almost all of it on dual carriageway and motorway. Why do I drive a lot in the middle lane? – well traffic in the slow lane is going slower than I am! Then when I do pull into the slow lane I cannot pull out again because everyone at the back of me pulls out and blocks any space in the middle lane that I might pull into. Hence I become a user of the middle lane and wonder why traffic moving faster than me will not be considerate enough to move over to the fast lane when there is plenty of room; instead they tailgate me, pull past and cut me up. I repeat – you cannot lane block at 70mph, faster than that is against the law.
Sitting in the middle lane whilst not overtaking and causing other traffic to go around you is bad road etiquette and goes against the advice in the highway code. There is no ‘middle lane’ or ‘slow lane’ there is a driving lane and 2 overtaking lanes. If you are not overtaking you shouldn’t be sitting in those lanes. Maybe the people pulling out behind you see they are coming up on slower traffic and pull out to overtake while there is a gap. Why don’t you do that? If you think you can’t lane block at 70mph then try sitting in the fast lane on a motorway at that speed. Entirely possible you will cause an accident doing that through other drivers frustration and its no good saying its not your fault when a serious accident occurs when you could’ve driven more considerately. Antagonising other drivers unnecessarily is bad driving.
Talking of vehicle data collection I know that my motorcycle records data from the last x (not sure of the value of x) minutes of travel I bet cars do something similar.
“so that their insurance premiums go down over time”. Rubbish, I have been driving since 1958, and over my life have driven buses, coaches, both in the UK and on the continent . I have never had an accident, I also hold “safe Driving” awards, yet my insurance continues to rise year after year. Insurance companies, generally, are uncontrolled leeches who continue to rip the motorist off at every opportunity.
The only way to make insurance go down is to shop around when your renewal is due. I saved around 120 quid about this time last year. My renewal has gone up this year, but not enough to warrant a change. Insurers are only interested in new business and not keeping the business they have, so it is always worth checking what some other insurer will offer you.
In principle, it may have benefits in the long term for safer driving, developing driver aids etc, and in the short term it may save me money.
However, I have concerns as to how this data may be used and how it would be protected from hackers.
I would be happy to have a black box fitted if it reduced my insurance costs however as a 64 year old I doubt I will gain financially. We all like to think we are good drivers I think a box fitted would remind and focus my concentration on driving better consistantly albeit as time passed I would probably forget it was fitted. My only concern is the information being obtained on my use and journey’s by other third parties – big brother.
I didn’t have a black box, but I did have an app for my insurer – they didn’t want to renew my quote and, although I don’t really know why, can’t help but think that I wasn’t a bad enough driver to make money out of…
When we read or hear from high profile, greatly admired and highly influential individuals, especially upon young people, of the likes of Jeremy Clarkson spouting such arrant rubbish such as “when I am driving at the legal limit along a rural lane I don’t think I should have to encounter horses on the same road”, or words to that effect (note the emphasis was on ‘legal’ and not ‘safe’!) is not surprising that younger drivers are likely to want to emulate the nonsense that such people promote? What’s more, why is it that cars are perpetually growing more powerful with emphasis on BHP and how fast one can get around a bend when 75% of driving these days means sitting in long stationary or crawling queues, a situation only set to get worse? The reality is there is more stuff and nonsense rubbish promoted by car industries and traders to persuade a gullible public into buying their wares than from any other industry, mainly as artifacts for ‘let’s try to impress the neighbours and my peers’. Indeed, if one were to buy a house and within three years it was looked upon as being obsolete and worth less than half the price paid one would be outraged, yet we willingly fall for that confidence trick in ever increasing numbers.
My understanding is that they do not reflect “safe” driving but rather “hesitant” driving? Acceleration is apparently deemed to be unsafe for example.
What about using speed safely? I commute to work mainly along single carriageway with some long straight sections. There is nearly always a lorry doing 45-50 MPH and I use speed when safe to do so, to pass the lorry. I quickly reach 70+ MPH, pull back in and slow down to 60. How would a black box cater for this? I think if I was using one, I suspect my insurance would be much higher than I currently pay.
I’d be happy to have one fitted but can it detect whether I am at the wheel, or my wife?
The drivers in Hounslow are shocking but you only have to look who behind the wheel and it’s not white British all driving on dodgy licences
In the article, it says the most dangerous roads are 60mph and this is due to “lack of experience” which is only partly true. The main cause is the totally inadequate driving training provided by how the government wants pupils taught.
I would be willing but don’t know where to get one
If it saves us Money and we have nothing to worry about, What’s the problem? I would as well, but my present Insurrer said I didn’t need one, as I haven’t made a claim for a long time, and drive a car that I am more likely to want to look after.
So you are going to take the word of others it is going to bring down your premiums each and every year? What a trusting soul you are! Insurers love you.
A good review, although lane dodging, overtaking on the inside, pulling out in front of oncoming vehicles, poor parking and not checking mirrors may not be recorded
Although I appreciate they may help younger drivers drive more safely, I would not be keen to have one installed. As with everything else in our lives, the data collected can be sold on and used to show a lot more than just how you drive. If I want to be tagged, then I will ask for an ankle tag….Big Brother in the car and big companies dictating what I can and can’t do…..no thanks!
So you don’t think your Car gathers this Info in any case? It has the ability!
Bit of a wild statement, considering you have no idea what car Paul drives. How has a car without an ECU got the ability to collect data?
There are millions of cars on our roads still managing quite well without complex electronics.
If you read his response he says, if you are concerned about data collection you should never buy BMW or similar…….. he doesn’t say the author has one!!
With observation like that maybe telematics is for you afterall, or to help the rest of us!!
It’s not so much big brother as just collecting data. why would anyone want to know what you are doing ( unless you are up to no good). I would willingly have one, I already have a dash cam. Anything that can improve the very poor standard of driving is very welcome as far as I’m concerned.
Naive in the extreme! 🙁
There are those who take a delight in setting other people up – or even creating malware to make other’s lives hard.
Be careful with dashcams, they are increasingly being used by the authorities to prove their owners misdemeanours as well as those around them!
I appreciate the concern, but assume you don’t use an Android or Apple phone, which collects much more info about your life than any car black box will ever do!! Of course, when signing up for anything you need to read the small print. Under the data protection act companies cannot release personal data unless a customer has signed to agree it’s release. And anyone concerned about companies collecting telemetry data on the way they drive should never buy a BMW, or host of other modern cars, as they collect exactly the same information, and feed it back to the manufacturer via in cast GSM modules, for analysis!
I don’t have an android or apple phone and I will never be able to afford a BMW – currently I have a 13 year old diesel and when that goes what will I be able to afford?
As for data protection – I have just had an email wishing me Happy New Year and offering me groupage services across the Black Sea and also between Turkey and Central Asia – any ideas how this happened?
Biggest driver problem on the roads is caused by mobile phone usage, and visually following sat. navs/on-board computers. These drivers are so busy looking at screens that they are not actually concentrating on the road. Either these need to be non-visual or drivers need to learn how to read road signs. .
I drive a school minibus for my local authority. I agree Lesley I’ve been watching drivers using mobile phones while driving for years. I have a high vantage point so I can see the phones through the side mirrors and rear view mirrors. I can see the blue glow on their dashboard and watch them pick up or put mobiles’s down after a call etc.. When the law changed recently to increase penalties, I saw less of it for a while but I’d say it’s as bad as it ever was now. Texting between their legs while their eyes are down. Putting the mobile on their shoulder and tilting their heads, using facebook at traffic lights etc etc. You name it I see it every day. It’s not always younger drivers and many times the perpetrator has a dash cam set up but it won’t record them using their phones when there’s an accident. I’m glad this article appeared in my email because I’ve just sent it to my 27 year old Son who had a black box fitted yesterday after passing his test in November. He’s an overconfident young man and I fear he’ll only learn after he burns his fingers (as per usual). Just hope he gets off lightly because he’ll expect me to repair the car because I’ve got tools and a driveway hahaha. I just hope he reads it objectively.
I use a SATNAV when travelling in an area that I don’t know but have it out of sight. What I do have in front of me is a HUD speedometer. To save money, my Picasso has the speed display in the centre well off to the left. On top of that it is impossible to see when the sun is bright. The HUD is visible at all but sun in your eyes. Also, because it’s in front of me and just below eye level, I find that it keeps me to the speed limit.
What is a HUD?
Instead of looking at the massive map books that my parents used to while driving?
So they suggest that women are more sensible behind the wheel? Could this not be to do with how many black boxes happen to be fitted to cars driven by women, as opposed to cars driven by men? And that not all insurance companies partake of this survey? I have to say, that in my area, most of the worst drivers around me are not men at all, and that I often take lifts in other people’s cars, and generally feel perfectly safe, regardless of whether the driver is a man or a woman. So such data obviously has not been collected from this area. I am not being biased, I am merely stating my own observations. I do not see how an optional black box’s statistics can mean anything in this respect. Unless 100% of all cars are fitted with these, and that exactly 50% of all drivers at all times are men, and 50%women, such surveys are entirely worthless. I should also point out, that the volume of vehicles driven by women here is much, much higher. It is nearly always women who drive their children to and from school, there are more women drivers parking at the three supermarkets I visit (at any one day of the week), and fewer women in my area take advantage of public transport, leaving their car in the garage. You cannot convince me that sufficient data from black boxes has been collected, in order to represent both sexes’ driving habits entirely fairly.
I live near a school where the speed limit is 20mph for a considerable distance each side. In the six years that I have lived here, I have noticed that a huge amount of speedsters are young women. They are often tail-gaters,too.
tend to agree with you Dave. Gender is no longer an indication of how good or bad a driver is.
Somehow I doubt the women drivers who speed past me on a frequent basis are the ones with these boxes fitted in their car. I think the data refers to younger female drivers who have just passed their test.
What a pointless article. It tells us the driving habits of young drivers and then not in anymore detail than the stats provided by insurance companies.
Its more of an ad for the insurance industry desperate to get us all to install these boxes.
We already have more big brother surveillance in this country than any other European country . The last thing needed is to have big brother in the car with you.
there is an old statement “the biggest risk with any vehicle is the nut behind the wheel” irrespective of how old the nut is!
Yes, I would like a Black Box. I think it would assist in making me drive with more care and consideration, even though I believe I do that already. So long as it brings my insurance premiums down, I couldn’t care less what people or big companies know about me.
Good luck if it got your premiums down Dave. I wouldnt trust these insurers as far as I could throw them. I have fitted a dash cam and its surprising how it makes you drive just that bit more carefully knowing the police will take that as evidence if I have an accident.
Good move! Much better to provide one’s own surveillance and have at least a semblance of control over one’s own data. 🙂
Go on then, sell us down the river to big brother and ‘his’ abuse of big data!
I had a blackbox fitted with Coverbox around the ages of 40-43, as I believed it would be most economical that way as I only drove <3000 miles p/a, (and had little NCD), and also wanted to give my girlfriend lessons so included her as named driver. Fine at first but then very expensive add-on monthly premium if I went over my monthly estimated mileage. I scrapped car soon after and wouldn't go back to Coverbox, but did however build up some NCD in that time.
Good point George and something I think the article overlooked. Do all the insurers slap on a ‘penalty’ if you go over your estimate? Perhaps another good reason to avoid them.
As we all know, if we are perfectly honest with each other there are times when even the most careful and law abiding motorist (yes you advance motorists and ex police drivers too) will inadvertently exceed the speed limit even for just a fleeting moment. There are also times when an idiot pulls out of a side turning in front of you, with little warning and you have to touch the brakes with a bit more pressure than normal. As far as that box of tricks and your insurers are considered you are a BAD DRIVER and you will pay the price. So no, I wont be getting one fitted thank you, at least not until they are about 1000 times cleverer than they are now.
Spot on. Without a dash cam to contextualise what the other road users were doing around you the spy in the car is meaningless. Your comment also highlights that the idiot who pulls out of the side road probably didn’t brake hard, accelerate hard or corner violently. The black box is flawed….
My objection to these devices is that there is an excessive focus on speed in excess of the limit, which is disproportionate to the cause of accidents. Speed in excess of the limit is “a factor” in only 25% of KSI’s, this does not mean that speed was the primary cause but only that it contributed to the final outcome. The largest primary causes of “killed or seriously injured” road traffic collisions are actually inattention and errors of judgement, things that these boxes cannot measure.
As indicated in the story above government data shows that the problem is inexperience, the antidote to which is more, higher quality, training. If there really was any desire to reduce RTCs the obsession with speed would be abandoned to focus on improving driving standards.
I agree fully with you the standard of driving is shocking.
Before having boxes fitted to vehicles some people should use things that are already fitted to vehicles
Things like indicators
Totally agree with R Kingham. I’ve been driving for over 50 years and I’ve noticed a in increase in selfish drivers, no consideration for other road users. Never use indicators (especially on roundabouts), never change lanes to allow vehicles to filter in, always drives in centre lane of motorway, never moves forward in traffic holdups (forgetting that people are behind them and possibly blocking another junction) and when beeped to move with rest of traffic she (yes she) got out of car and went into a rage with the person who beeped her.
Black box is OK for those that need to reduce their insurance but, as another contributor states, some drivers just need to consider other road users.
Just did 240 miles almost all of it on dual carriageway and motorway. Why do I drive a lot in the middle lane? – well traffic in the slow lane is going slower than I am! Then when I do pull into the slow lane I cannot pull out again because everyone at the back of me pulls out and blocks any space in the middle lane that I might pull into. Hence I become a user of the middle lane and wonder why traffic moving faster than me will not be considerate enough to move over to the fast lane when there is plenty of room; instead they tailgate me, pull past and cut me up. I repeat – you cannot lane block at 70mph, faster than that is against the law.
Sitting in the middle lane whilst not overtaking and causing other traffic to go around you is bad road etiquette and goes against the advice in the highway code. There is no ‘middle lane’ or ‘slow lane’ there is a driving lane and 2 overtaking lanes. If you are not overtaking you shouldn’t be sitting in those lanes. Maybe the people pulling out behind you see they are coming up on slower traffic and pull out to overtake while there is a gap. Why don’t you do that? If you think you can’t lane block at 70mph then try sitting in the fast lane on a motorway at that speed. Entirely possible you will cause an accident doing that through other drivers frustration and its no good saying its not your fault when a serious accident occurs when you could’ve driven more considerately. Antagonising other drivers unnecessarily is bad driving.
Talking of vehicle data collection I know that my motorcycle records data from the last x (not sure of the value of x) minutes of travel I bet cars do something similar.
“so that their insurance premiums go down over time”. Rubbish, I have been driving since 1958, and over my life have driven buses, coaches, both in the UK and on the continent . I have never had an accident, I also hold “safe Driving” awards, yet my insurance continues to rise year after year. Insurance companies, generally, are uncontrolled leeches who continue to rip the motorist off at every opportunity.
The only way to make insurance go down is to shop around when your renewal is due. I saved around 120 quid about this time last year. My renewal has gone up this year, but not enough to warrant a change. Insurers are only interested in new business and not keeping the business they have, so it is always worth checking what some other insurer will offer you.
In principle, it may have benefits in the long term for safer driving, developing driver aids etc, and in the short term it may save me money.
However, I have concerns as to how this data may be used and how it would be protected from hackers.
I would be happy to have a black box fitted if it reduced my insurance costs however as a 64 year old I doubt I will gain financially. We all like to think we are good drivers I think a box fitted would remind and focus my concentration on driving better consistantly albeit as time passed I would probably forget it was fitted. My only concern is the information being obtained on my use and journey’s by other third parties – big brother.
I didn’t have a black box, but I did have an app for my insurer – they didn’t want to renew my quote and, although I don’t really know why, can’t help but think that I wasn’t a bad enough driver to make money out of…
When we read or hear from high profile, greatly admired and highly influential individuals, especially upon young people, of the likes of Jeremy Clarkson spouting such arrant rubbish such as “when I am driving at the legal limit along a rural lane I don’t think I should have to encounter horses on the same road”, or words to that effect (note the emphasis was on ‘legal’ and not ‘safe’!) is not surprising that younger drivers are likely to want to emulate the nonsense that such people promote? What’s more, why is it that cars are perpetually growing more powerful with emphasis on BHP and how fast one can get around a bend when 75% of driving these days means sitting in long stationary or crawling queues, a situation only set to get worse? The reality is there is more stuff and nonsense rubbish promoted by car industries and traders to persuade a gullible public into buying their wares than from any other industry, mainly as artifacts for ‘let’s try to impress the neighbours and my peers’. Indeed, if one were to buy a house and within three years it was looked upon as being obsolete and worth less than half the price paid one would be outraged, yet we willingly fall for that confidence trick in ever increasing numbers.
My understanding is that they do not reflect “safe” driving but rather “hesitant” driving? Acceleration is apparently deemed to be unsafe for example.
What about using speed safely? I commute to work mainly along single carriageway with some long straight sections. There is nearly always a lorry doing 45-50 MPH and I use speed when safe to do so, to pass the lorry. I quickly reach 70+ MPH, pull back in and slow down to 60. How would a black box cater for this? I think if I was using one, I suspect my insurance would be much higher than I currently pay.
I’d be happy to have one fitted but can it detect whether I am at the wheel, or my wife?
The drivers in Hounslow are shocking but you only have to look who behind the wheel and it’s not white British all driving on dodgy licences
In the article, it says the most dangerous roads are 60mph and this is due to “lack of experience” which is only partly true. The main cause is the totally inadequate driving training provided by how the government wants pupils taught.
yes