Hardly any motorist would say of himself that he has an unsafe or risky driving style. That always only applies to the others. Telematics tell you in black and white whether you are really careful on the roads – and at the same time, you can save on your car insurance. Because your car insurer also incurs fewer costs if you have fewer accidents. However, you should be aware that with telematics you also disclose a lot of data.
How does driving behavior affect the price of car insurance?
The term telematics is a word created from telecommunications and computer science. Insurers use telematics in motor vehicle insurance to record and evaluate customer driving behavior and to reward careful driving with discounts.
To do this, an app on the smartphone, usually in combination with a plug or sensor, measures how the driver behaves in traffic. The data is transmitted to a service provider who informs the insurer of the corresponding number of points. The better this so-called score, the higher the savings.
As a rule, drivers can also check their driving style themselves with their smartphone in order to be a little more careful on the next trip. The providers of telematics hope that this will lead to safer driving behavior and thus fewer accidents. However, it is not so easy to prove whether motorists really change their behavior in traffic on the basis of the telematics evaluation.
In contrast to pay-as-you-drive tariffs, which only measure mileage, insurance policies with pay-how-you-drive, the so-called telematics tariffs, also include data about your driving behavior.
This is how telematics assesses driving style
What exactly goes into the evaluation of the driving style differs from insurer to insurer. The percentage of the total number of points that the individual factors make up also depends on the provider.
In addition to driving behavior, other criteria are often included in the calculation, such as the time and whether you are driving on a motorway or in a large city. These factors can have a negative effect on your score without you being able to change anything.
In the following you will find the most common criteria according to which the savings on a telematics tariff are calculated:
Rapid acceleration – Anyone who accelerates often and quickly will be penalized with a point deduction for being considered an aggressive driver. The technology can usually distinguish whether it is a sensible acceleration during an overtaking maneuver on the motorway or a breakneck maneuver to speed over the traffic light while still in cheery yellow.
Hard braking – If you suddenly brake hard, you often didn’t pay proper attention to the traffic beforehand. This happens particularly often in front of traffic lights or in stop-and-go traffic. Important for insurance companies: this makes rear-end collisions more likely.
Speed - Excessive speed leads to more and worse accidents. Stick to the speed limit, then the provider will rate your driving style better.
Cornering behavior – When driving rapidly in curves, higher centrifugal forces arise in the vehicle. In the worst case, it will carry the car out of the curve and into the guardrail. A good cornering position even on winding roads is therefore good for your score.
Smartphone use – Anyone who actively uses their cell phone while driving, for example, to write messages, does not concentrate on the traffic. Since this increases the risk of accidents, some insurers rate this factor explicitly negative.
Night driving – visibility is poor in the dark, which increases the risk of accidents.
Road type – Cars crash particularly often in urban areas, less often in urban areas. It is therefore best for the score if you are traveling on federal highways and motorways.
There is more to safe driving than the telematics score
What the technology cannot record is not included in the evaluation: driving hard or driving over red traffic lights are major accident risks that are normally not measured with telematics.
In addition, due to the weighting and the technology used, the insurance companies sometimes determine very different results for the same driving style. A safe driving style does not automatically mean a high telematics discount. It may be that you have to adapt your driving style a little to the telematics evaluation.
Who is a telematics tariff for?
With most insurance companies that offer telematics, you can choose to choose telematics in addition to your normal car insurance. Depending on the number of points, you will then receive a discount of up to 30 percent.
Many insurers also offer telematics tariffs for older drivers. Taking out a telematics tariff is at most worthwhile for you as a young driver or if you have no or only a small no-claims discount of your own. If you are already better classified and are interested in a telematics tariff, you should note that you are giving away a lot of data for a relatively small discount. If you do not yet have suitable and inexpensive car insurance, we, therefore, recommend that you look for cheaper car insurance first.
When comparing the tariffs, you should note that the point in time from which the insurer takes the discount into account varies significantly. Allianz, Ergo, Huk-Coburg, and Huk24 only pay you the discount on your premium in the second year of insurance. The same applies to Cosmosdirekt if you have not yet recorded 400 kilometers with the app when concluding the contract.
Other providers grant you the discount right from the start (Württembergische) as soon as a score has been found (Sijox) or after reaching a minimum number of kilometers or hours (Dialog, Generali, VHV). With Württembergische, you must also have two additional insurance contracts in order to use the tariff.
Try telematics
If you first want to try out whether a telematics tariff is right for you, you can download a corresponding app without insurance. However, you should make sure that you agree to the terms of use of the app and that the respective service provider processes your data. With the Cosmosdirekt app, the company even uses the recorded driving data when the contract is concluded to calculate your contributions.
What good are telematics insurances in price comparison?
Telematics is still a niche for technology-loving drivers in Germany. At the end of 2019, only about 300,000 were using such a tariff. And the number of providers of telematics tariffs is also falling. While there were 14 in 2017, ten insurers still have a telematics tariff in their portfolio at the beginning of 2020: Allianz, Dialog Versicherung, Generali, Huk-Coburg, Huk24, VHV as well as Cosmosdirekt, Ergo, Sijox, and Württembergische. The latter four limit their offers to young drivers.
Mercedes-Benz Bank owners can take out a separate telematics tariff for some models from HDI.
It is very difficult to achieve maximum discounts
If you decide on a telematics tariff: Don’t expect the highest possible discounts. Almost all insurers have top values that you can only achieve with very telematics-friendly driving. Also consider whether you are affected by factors that are difficult to influence, such as frequent night trips or trips through larger cities. Often you cannot get the highest discount in the first place.
Cosmosdirekt even goes one step further and works with a completely flexible price. If you drive very badly, you will pay almost twice as much as if you had a very good score. If you only get an average score at Cosmosdirekt, you should definitely check whether you are traveling cheaper without telematics. In autumn you always have the option to change your car insurance.
Savings trick: You don’t have to have every trip evaluated
Most insurers want you to record a minimum number of trips and a minimum distance, or that the app is turned on every time you drive. But nobody can help you if your cell phone battery is empty or you have forgotten the telematics plug at home. From time to time, an unfavorable night drive can therefore be excluded from the measurement.
Only with the telematics tariffs of Huk-Coburg and Huk24 does this not work because the sensor is firmly glued to the windshield. This checks whether there is a connection to the smartphone while driving and takes this into account when evaluating the respective journey.
If you only have the best trips evaluated on a regular basis, however, this can lead to the insurer canceling your discount.
How does telematics technology get into the car?
Most insurers rely on a smartphone app to measure driving data. This is technically the simplest solution. However, as a driver, you have to pay attention to most of this yourself.
Another variant is that the insurer gives you a plug for the cigarette lighter or a special sensor that is attached to the windshield. At Allianz, for example, you need the plug if your car has no other Bluetooth source. Instead, Huk-Coburg and Huk24 use a sensor that measures your driving data together with the app. Only the VHV uses a plug in the cigarette lighter to record your driving behavior. You can then display the results in an app.
Additional functions are dispensable
With a telematics app, you often get some additional technical gadgets. Be it a gas station search, a parking meter timer, or support for the logbook – most additional functions are not really important or can be downloaded as an app without a telematics tariff.
How secure is my data with telematics tariffs?
In order for the insurance to be able to evaluate driving behavior, it needs a lot of traffic data from its customers. The insurers also reserve the right to evaluate the data collected for their own purposes.
However, the insurance companies have agreed on a high level of protection for personal data. The driving data is only forwarded and evaluated in pseudonymized form. So you don’t have to worry that Allianz can understand where you like to spend your evenings most.
The insurance company does not evaluate the data directly but works with a separate company. The insurer has your name and the final score; The evaluating company only analyzes the telematics factors and assigns them a number with which your customer data has been pseudonymized.
The police are only allowed to access the data in the case of very serious criminal offenses. Getting a ticket for driving too fast because of telematics is excluded.
In the times of Facebook and Google, the data protection code of the General Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) creates a high standard for the protection of personal data. Nonetheless, a large amount of anonymized data is generated with telematics.
Telematics make your own smartphone even more important
Your own smartphone already evaluates the telematics data via the app if you have decided on a telematics tariff. You should therefore have a certain basic technical understanding in order to use the application correctly. If the telematics tariff works purely via the smartphone, the mobile phone could, for example, add a trip as a passenger or in a taxi to your score.
Your specific movement profile is often saved on your mobile phone so that you can evaluate your driving behavior yourself. If someone else has access to your smartphone, they can also see when you went where.
In addition, the app continuously uses the battery of your mobile phone. Some telematics tariffs can also use up the data volume. This can quickly become expensive, especially when traveling outside the European Union. You can read more about this in our article on data roaming.
Are you thinking about a telematics tariff? What do you think is good, what is bad?
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