delusionofgrandeur

Norwich Union, the UK’s largest insurance company has ended it’s pilot program of an insurance scheme which involved a driver’s every move being tracked and store on a database.

The idea behind the system dubbed ‘Pay as you drive’ was that if drivers avoided traveling a ‘high-risk’ times such as the rush hour, they could be afforded reduced premiums. The system was enforced by GPS + GSM based surveillance and charged a ‘per mile’ insurance rate. Drivers could pay as little as 5p/mile during the day (outside of the rush hour) but could be charged as much as £1/mile at night.

Understandably, many drivers were not keen to join the program as a private company would have access to precise information about their whereabouts (or at least their vehicles whereabouts) at any time. The invasion of privacy and security implications aside, the system only attracted 10,000 users over it’s 3 years of operation. Presumably, the cost of the GPS hardware and it’s continued data connection to the GSM network would have been high.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Automotive, Cars, News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.