insurance Archives

Insurance Designed for Young Drivers

Mar 23 2015

Geared totally towards the most risky population segment to insure – young and new drivers – ingenie has seen success over the UK and has arrived in Canada to try and repeat success.

How it works – plug the device into your OBDII port and trade information on your driving style for a break on insurance. Prove you’re a safe driver, get discounts. Prove you drive like a d-bag, lose discounts, plus a psychologist calls you.

Read it online at Autonet.

Favourite line:

If that happens, your phone will ring and a psychologist will be on the other end, who will talk to you about why you’re driving like a jerk and endangering others.

Currently, the company is modifying a device just for me to test, stay tuned for that.

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UPDATE: column concludes I’ll be testing one but that fell through; the company couldn’t modify a unit to go in a different car each week.

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Back to ‘Keri on Driving’ – Index

All New Cars have a “Black Box”

Feb 26 2014

All new 2014 vehicles now ship with a an EDR – Event Data Recorder, or, “black box.”

It constantly records information while the car is in motion, but only saves it in the event of a crash, a few seconds in total.

Information the EDR records: vehicle speed and acceleration, throttle and brake positions, ignition cycles, seat belt usage, velocity changes throughout a collision, and airbag deployment.

More sophisticated EDRs are arriving, which also record GPS data, seat position and steering, plus they continuously save the information.

Read it online at Autonet.ca

Favourite line:

My Prediction – EDRs & Car Insurance – 2nd last paragraph

I predict insurance companies will start to use the data, something like, “connect your EDR to our system, and reduce your monthly cost by paying for insurance only when you drive!

Here comes the “Connected Car”. It’s going to be huge guys.

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Back to ‘Keri on Driving’ – Index

Fight Every Speeding Ticket

Nov 27 2013

A 2-part mini-series on speeding.

Read the other one, from the police perspective, here.

We speak with Jason Baxter at X-Copper Legal Services on why he feels it best to fight every ticket.

Read it online at Autonet.ca.

Favourite line:

Always fight a speeding ticket, because the insurance company can use that one ticket to raise your rates for three years.

You do this for the insurance game – not to save on the ticket itself, but in an art-of-the-long-view thing.

Update

Okay woah, this one really set people off over at Autonet… 118 comments what?! Might be a site record.

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Back to ‘Keri on Driving’ – Index

About those Pink Insurance Slips

Jan 2 2013

(read it online here)

Favourite line:

Here’s the most important part: your pink slip must be the original. It cannot be a photocopy. So go ahead and leave it in your car; it’s of zero value to anyone other than you.

That photocopy fact is straight from the MoT, I went and asked.

Love the ending to this column.

While researching, I discovered something:

Ask me in real life I’ll tell you. It’s nothing super-secret, actually, it’s kind of amazingly obvious.

Lastly, HAHA my personal pink slip was printed in the paper. Security is relative.

For the first time, I don’t have a physical copy of this week’s column. It’s been affecting me all day, my fridge collection was perfect.

If you see it this week, can you please rip it out and mail it to me.

Not sure what happened… our Auto section always runs on Wednesdays, but today it was just one page that’s it. This was the top of the page, that’s my Civic review top right, but it printed weeks ago. It was a confusing day.