Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 7 Aug 2013:
It’s terribly expensive right now when it comes to securing car insurance or van insurance, but despite that drivers are finding ways around these limitations.
Commercial van insurance is a terribly expensive proposition, especially if you’ve a whole fleet of vehicles to deal with. Well, there are new products and services out there that focus specifically on fleets of vans or other commercial vehicles, and they’re using telematics as a way to save customers some cash.
Telematics is, let’s be honest – a fantastic use of satnav technology. If you’re not familiar, it goes a bit like this: you fit a vehicle with a telematics device and it keeps track of your motoring habits – when and where you drive, how aggressive you take corners, whether you brake excessively or in an unsafe manner, and whether you exceed the speed limit – and if your insurer finds you’re a crap driver it raises your rates, but if you’re a good driver you get your premiums reduced.
Sometimes telematics aren’t that cost-effective in that they cost quite a bit of dosh. This problem is minimised if you’re applying them across a fleet of vehicles, though – especially since many insurers may be willing to cut you a break on the initial price since you’re fitting several vans or cars at a time – and this has made telematics quite ideal for smart van companies looking to save some cash.
So van drivers are getting more intelligent at the choices they make, but did you know they’re also keeping more honest as well? Well, that’s what a recent research study discovered anyway.
An insurer tested the honesty of some 30,000 insurance claims over a period of two years and found that, even though there are more idiots perpetrating insurance fraud through ‘cash-for-crash’ accidents, the lion’s share of drivers are actually incredibly honest when it comes to owning up to their own mistakes.
This makes me happy, because I’m tired of always hearing from insurers how dishonest drivers have become. It’s especially tiresome to keep hear insurance companies complain how drivers are always trying to take them for a ride when it comes to making exaggerated or completely fabricated insurance claims, so it’s an absolute breath of fresh air to get some hard evidence that these insurers are probably just complaining for no good reason. Yes, I know fraud is a problem but let’s not lose sight of the fact that so many drivers actually aren’t compete bastards, shall we?