How In-Car Data Could Rewrite the Rules of Car Insurance

Over the last few decades, car insurance companies have hinged their premiums based on car accidents and speeding tickets. In the future, however, we could see a change where auto insurance companies look at every slam of the brake system and every time the gas pedal gets pumped. In fact, according to the Indiana Department of Insurance, we have already seen more than two dozen auto insurance companies that have launched into collecting data this way on a small scale.

Through Liberty Mutual insurance, there is a smartphone app that records the more in-depth driving details, such as hard stops, hours driven at night, fast acceleration and the total miles driven. If you score well with this app, you could be eligible for a discount of up to 30 percent. Liberty Mutual launched this program, known as RightTrack, at the start of January, and it has been so successful that it could soon spread to more southern states like Georgia and the others.

In the past, we saw how a lot of insurance companies offered telematics equipment to record your driving habits. Because around 68 percent of adult drivers now own a smartphone, a lot of car insurance companies have started to show an eagerness of leaping into the new and revolutionary methods of collecting data.

While the program does show promise, there are concerns that insurance companies will abuse the system. For example, some analysts believe that insurance companies will eventually use telematic equipment to penalize bad drivers. Karl Brauer, a researcher and analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said that you cannot always assume benevolent intentions. Eventually, insurance companies could start to use the system to raise a person's rates long before an accident even takes place. The advantage is that a lot of these programs are voluntary so that insurance companies have to stay honest, and since data privacy has become an increasing concern, the chances of mandating this data collection method drivers is still unlikely.

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Source:
Indianapolis Business Journal