A simple guide to safe driving, and how insurethebox customers can be rewarded for being cautious behind the wheel
Let’s get one thing straight before we begin…
Driving safely does not just mean driving at 10mph and checking your surroundings 100+ times before making a manoeuvre.
Actually, quite the opposite. Safe driving seems like an incredibly easy concept to explain, but it’s not just about watching your speed and checking your mirrors before every manoeuvre.
Of course, these factor into safe driving, but when we talk about this term here at insurethebox, we take quite a few other things into consideration.
How do we look at safe driving?
As you probably know – we offer our customers telematics insurance policies (or black box insurance – for those of you that are unsure what that means), which essentially allows us to monitor our customers’ driving behaviour.
As a mantra, we reward safe driving – offering up to 100 Bonus Miles each month if a customer displays behaviour which points towards safe driving.
Not only this, we use these Bonus Miles to calculate a personalised price at renewal which – for safe drivers – could result in a great saving. In fact, 59% of our customers renewing after their first year in 2019 were offered a premium discount of 36% on average!
So, that’s a potential of 1,200 free extra miles each year and a potential saving at renewal – all for safe driving.
What is taken into consideration?
Using what your black box tells us, we measure safe driving on the following 5 criteria:
Speed
As is often the case, increased speed equals increased danger. Driving is about more than just putting your foot down – so make sure that you drive at an appropriate speed for the type of road and conditions; this may be lower than the actual speed limit.
It’s more important that you arrive at your location safely.
Smooth Driving
Are you a little too heavy on the brakes? Or lead footed when it comes to acceleration?
Both of these are significant factors in safe driving by our standards. The smoother you drive, the more Bonus Miles you will earn in the process.
So it’s important that you look ahead, keep your attention fully on the road, avoid any distractions, and try not to brake suddenly, or sharply accelerate.
Taking Breaks
Driving can be incredibly tiring – whenever you make a long journey it’s so important you stop frequently; driver fatigue is a common factor in road accidents so keeping yourself alert can help keep you safe.
To earn Bonus Miles at insurethebox, we would recommend that you take a break of at least 20 minutes, every 2 hours.
Time of Day
Often people fear driving at certain points in the day – perhaps it’s because they’re too busy, or people do not like to drive in the dark. Whatever the reason, personal preference is absolutely fine.
But our records have shown that accidents are much more likely to occur during the night (we define night time as 11pm – 4am).
We don’t have a curfew which can impact drivers who may need to drive at night but if you can avoid driving at night, then you will likely reduce your risk of an accident and earn more Bonus Miles with us.
There are also peaks in accidents occurring during the evening rush hour (5pm – 6pm). So, if you do have to travel during these times, be extra careful.
Motorway Miles
Do you have to travel on the motorway to travel for work? Or live remotely, so need to use the motorway frequently?
Don’t worry – this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, motorways are statistically the safest roads to drive on, here in the UK.
So, you can actually earn more Bonus Miles by travelling on these types of roads, but please be careful and travel at the appropriate speed – bad weather can be very dangerous at high speeds.
We want to encourage all of our customers to pick up good driving practices and help them become safer drivers on our roads.
By offering Bonus Miles and personalised renewals, we want to show young drivers that safe driving can be rewarding – in addition to the reward of staying alive!
So, our key takeaways from this guide are:
- Drive at an appropriate speed.
- Be smooth on your brakes and accelerator.
- Take regular breaks on long journeys.
- Choose to drive when it’s safer to do so.
- Drive on the motorway, if it’s an option.
Take these steps going forward and watch those Bonus Miles come flooding in!