Britain’s biggest black box car insurance company has released new data that appears to show that some of the riskiest drivers on our roads are also some of the youngest.
Insurethebox has been providing telematics-based car insurance since 2010. It recently analysed its records for 2017 – and has found that, from 4 million miles of driving data, drivers aged 17-21 were responsive for more than 7 in 10 of the most serious ‘high impact collision alerts’ via its Accident Alert service.
These alerts are auto-generated when dangerous incidents are detected. It works in a similar way to eCall, the automatic emergency call function that’s now mandatory on new cars sold in the EU.
The alerts are triggered when a significant G-force is registered: the system will examine the time of day, whether the vehicle is still moving, and what road the car is on. If it senses an accident is a possibility, contact with the driver is automatically attempted. If this unsuccessful, the emergency services can remotely be alerted by an operator.
For younger drivers to generate such a high proportion of the highest-level collision alerts is naturally damming, but the firm is framing it as a positive: “Our Accident Alert service is an example of telematics technology making UK roads safer,” said its road safety manager Simon Rewell.
“We provide young drivers with the benefits of connected motoring – and they don’t need to buy a brand new car to access it.”
Insurethebox revealed some other interesting findings from the data: it seems drivers who trigger Accident Alerts between midnight and 5am are six times more likely to require emergency services, with 43 percent of all accident alerts being triggered after 5pm.
The highest number of alerts throughout the year were triggered in December, while vehicles on a 30mph road are six times more likely to trigger an alert than those on a motorway, no matter what time of year it is.