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Discovery Insurance in South Africa has a car insurance policy that lowers your premiums based on the data from a logger they install in your car. Drive below t
by _djo_ 14y ago
Discovery Insurance in South Africa has a car insurance policy that lowers your premiums based on the data from a logger they install in your car. Drive below the speed limit, avoid hard acceleration from traffic lights and avoid cornering at high speeds and they lower your premiums by something like 50%.
Of course it's still an optional policy for now and easy to implement because most insurance companies insist that new vehicles in SA are fitted with a GPS car tracking system anyway, but it's an indication as to where things are heading.
- earthboundkid 14y agoIs the GPS requirement an anti-theft measure? There's nothing like that in the US, AFAIK.
- _djo_ 14y agoYes, vehicle theft and hijacking rates are a lot higher in South Africa than in the US and the recovery rate for a vehicle with a tracker system is massively better than for those without. One of the biggest risks with tracker systems is that if you're hijacked the criminals may force you to give up the unit's location if you know it, so it's been made public knowledge that when the tracking companies install one of the units (which is small enough to be hidden in many different places in a car's body) the owner is forbidden from watching it being done. So I have absolutely no idea where the tracker unit in my car is. Most of those tracking companies then have their own helicopter fleets and armed response teams to initiate the search and recovery of the car and either back up the police when they reach the scene or perform the arrest themselves. As an aside, the US equivalent is LoJack which operates in pretty much the same way, with the exception that LoJack signals are sent to the police, not to the tracking company's response units.