RoSPA and MyDrive promote safer driving and lower premiums

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has signed an exclusive agreement with MyDrive Solutions, an insurance telematics specialist, which will enable insurance premiums to be based on an accurate level of individual risk, rather than traditional proxies such as age, gender and postcode.

The agreement gives MyDrive unprecedented access to a group of RoSPA advanced drivers, into whose cars it has installed its Dynamic Drive Recorder to collect second-by-second driver-analysis information. The data collected will be used to develop a profile of an advanced driver, against which the driving styles of MyDrive technology users will be compared on an ongoing basis. Insurance firms will then be able to set premiums based on the accurate level of risk presented by individual drivers.

Rick Wood, RoSPA’s head of driver training, and his team have worked alongside the MyDrive software engineering team to certify the correct indicators to determine true driver capability and to ensure that a robust, credible and objective benchmark is set. The technology is different to other systems on the market because it provides a second-by-second analysis of driver behaviour, rather than just taking a “snapshot” every 30 seconds and logging exceptions such as sudden braking or acceleration.

As well as promoting safer driving, it is hoped that a bespoke approach to insurance premiums will have significant advantages for drivers, particularly some young drivers, who currently face being priced out of owning a car due to the high cost of insurance.

Frances Richardson, RoSPA’s operations director, said: “With help, most people can improve their driving, and given the information on where they are falling short of safer driving, coupled with the incentive of a dramatically lower insurance premium, people can adapt their style with the benefit of reducing the accident rate. For too long, the insurance industry has had no real data to help them differentiate premium levels on the basis of safer driving skill. Our partnership with MyDrive will remedy this and help us to fulfil our mission of saving lives and reducing injuries.”

Linden Holliday, chief executive of MyDrive Solutions, said: “This exclusive deal provides MyDrive with a real competitive edge as we have access to a depth of driver behaviour knowledge and data from the objective viewpoint of an advanced driving institution. In building our capability, we were conscious that we had to have a credible, objective benchmark against which we could measure driver capability. After all, this measurement and conclusion will have a direct impact on the premiums drivers pay for their insurance and we were keen to ensure that our detailed assessments were of the highest quality. RoSPA has invested a great deal of time and energy to assist MyDrive with the development of our algorithm, our benchmark profiles and in helping us to understand and record what constitutes good driving.”

RoSPA and MyDrive are also investigating the possibility of establishing a mentoring system, through which parents who have a child listed as a named driver on their insurance policy can see when there have been instances highlighted as dangerous and can seek guidance on what constitutes safer driving.

For more information about RoSPA Advanced Drivers and Riders (RoADAR), a network of 50 local groups which offer training for the RoSPA Advanced Driving Test and RoSPA Advanced Riding Test, visit www.roadar.org. To find out more about RoSPA’s wider road safety work, visit www.rospa.com/roadsafety/.

Further information about MyDrive is available at www.mydrivesolutions.com.