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Telematics isn’t Big Brother, it’s making us all safer

Image of Alisdair Suttie
Author: | Updated: 23 Oct 2015 17:32

Any injury or death on our roads will always cause uproar and calls for ‘something to be done’, yet so often nothing happens and we revert to our usual lives.

The conviction of Nicholas Regan recently should, however, serve as a turning point when we stop thinking something should be done and start doing something.

Regan, 24 from Basildon, admitted hitting Giussepe Tocco and perverting the course of justice. He had hit Tocco in his car and then failed to stop. When Regan was stopped by the police, he denied the charges.

Mr Tocco was left with serious brain injuries as a result of the collision, yet Regan still did not do the decent thing and confess his guilt. He claimed he was not driving the car and kept up this front for the 10 months it took for the case to come to court, wasting police and court time in the process.

However, the BMW Regan was driving was fitted with telematics that enabled the police to establish the exact movements of the car before, during and after the collision. It also provided incontrovertible information that Regan was driving at the time of the collision, which finally led him to admitting his guilt, but only after his callous failure to do so earlier that would have saved police time and Mr Tocco and his family huge upset.

Vital role

This incident shows a number of things. First Regan’s complete lack of care for another person is staggering, though he is now serving a nine-month prison sentence as a result. Also, it shows that telematics work on a broader basis than simply keeping tabs on how much fuel a driver is using or whether a young driver deserves a reduction in their insurance premium.

Both of these are extremely valid uses for telematics, of course, and offer private and business drivers a chance to measure and improve their driving. For businesses, this can lead to savings of thousands of pounds in reduced fuel bills and fewer incidences of collisions and claims on its vehicles.

The problem with telematics, and other monitoring technology such as dash cameras and intelligent speed adaptation (ISA), is they are all optional for private motorists. Even when a survey by road safety charity Brake shows that two-thirds (63%) of drivers in the UK would be happy to have this kind of technology in their vehicles, we see no effort to introduce it as standard or legislate for it in the future.

There are those who will use privacy as an argument to prevent these technologies being deployed but, really, who has that much to hide they don’t want their driving and location recorded and stored on a black box device. If this is such an issue, there is the ability to go into a ‘hide’ mode where the data is not recorded or monitored. You would have to ask why, though, someone would want that?

Tom Tom Telematics on iPad

A growing number of fleets are using telematics to fight speeding fines and false insurance claims

OnStar, on point

Looked at from the other side of the debate, Vauxhall has just launched its new Astra with OnStar as an option on all models and standard on some. This allows the driver to contact a call centre from anywhere to ask anything. Got lost and need an address? OnStar will sort you out. Need the nearest petrol station in a hurry? OnStar will guide you there.

It’s a very clever and yet simple concierge system that also doubles up as your co-pilot in case of an emergency. If the car detects a violent incident, it will automatically call the emergency services and can even unlock the car doors to allow access should the driver be unconscious or unable to do so.

It won’t be long before other car makers follow suit with their own versions of OnStar, but for those of us who have already bought or leased our car, there is the chance to fit monitoring technology to safeguard us from the likes of Nicholas Regan when driving.

Dash cameras are a great example of minimising the chances of a dispute in an insurance claim and many insurers now accept this footage. It’s simple and clear-cut. As for telematics, it can give similar levels of information to a dash-cam, though without the video footage that is so compelling in deciding fault in a collision.

Put the two together and you have a very powerful toolkit of safety measures.

Road Angel HD camera on rear view camera

As for ISA, this technology exists to limit the speed of the car to that of the posted speed limit. It’s something many drivers like the sound of but would prefer to have as an advisory system rather than it automatically taking control of speed. As something integrated with other measurement technology, the ISA could help drastically reduce road deaths and serious injuries by up to half, according to Brake.

That is exactly the sort of major step we need to take to reverse the increase in road deaths recorded in 2014, compared to 2013. While many drivers pay lip service to supporting a reduction in road deaths and serious injuries, the reality is most of us think it will never happen to us. I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen to any of us, but the truth is it will happen to someone and it’s likely to be the result of their own or another’s poor driving.

Any measure that makes drivers think about the standard of their driving is a measure worth taking. While some might think recording every driver’s behaviour and movements and speed is Big Brother poking his nose in too far, it is very hard to argue against the effect it will have on those normally law-abiding drivers who are tempted into a moment of hot-headed driving once in a while.

The Nicholas Regans of this world are much harder to legislate for, but as we see from the above, they can be caught and held accountable for their actions.

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