Last month Aviva launched an Android phone app to help build up a profile of your driving, with a view to rewarding safer drivers with a lower car insurance premium.
Techradar have been taking a look at a similar app from Confused.com, Motormate (for Android and iPhone), and have been testing it out over the past couple of weeks to see how it performs.
The free app runs in the background while you’re driving, measuring your driving style. It then gives you a score for your performance according to how safe you are on the road. You can compare your scores with other users.
Confused.com is currently offering rewards for the first 5,000 users reaching certain milestones with the app, such as complimentary in-car cradles and chargers, and £25 cashback. There’s no suggestion at this stage as to whether the data collected will be used to help lower your car insurance premiums, but ultimately that’s likely to be the reason for using telematic apps such as this.
Without a significant financial benefit, such apps are likely to be have a short-term novelty factor, but will probably become a bit of a chore to monitor each and every car trip.
Cheers for posting this Rob. What a great idea, especially so for young safe drivers who are unfairly penalised in my opinion. The app would need to be implicit to use, as like you correctly point out people wont bother to use it.
I personally don’t think this will catch on, although the app does seem pretty good! I bet there’ll be a flood of similar apps on the way though!