Its4women car insurance uses black box intelligence to reduce accident claims by 27% among its young drivers.

Ahead of Irish Road Safety Week (October 2-8), we have revealed that our use of telematics, or black box intelligence, has dramatically reduced driving risk factors among young motorists across its4women.

We monitored driving data provided under some 50,000 policies covering millions of kilometres of activity on Ireland’s roads, from 2015 to 2022.

Data from the period shows that the number of overall accident claims received by its4women has dropped by 27%, with claims involving bodily injury specifically dropping by 48%. Findings from the black boxes during the same period also showed that speeding events dropped by a dramatic 72% per policy.

These decreases are very good news for policy-holders in demonstrating the benefits of telematics in encouraging safer driving and helping to reduce their risk of serious injury, or perhaps even death, on our roads.

Telematics uses GPS and other technology to send information about the way a vehicle is being driven, including speed limit of the road, road type and road surface. It rewards people who drive safely by monitoring the big five risk factors: speeding, driving smoothness (braking, acceleration and cornering), distance travelled, where travelling to, and when travelling.  

Jean Hellewell, Managing Director, said: “It’s no secret that young drivers have the highest number of accidents. But young drivers are not all the same. Using telematics technology, our black boxes constantly measure the big five risk factors for young drivers, alerting them to potential risks and positively influencing their driving habits. 

“It’s thanks to Axon Telematics, which developed our telematics technology, that we are able to reveal these findings at a time when we focus on Irish Road Safety Week 2023.

“This event is a very important social awareness campaign that aims to reduce the number of road deaths in Ireland and we are delighted to be able to say that our relationship with Axon, and the analytics that it provides us with, can help support that goal.

”Ms Hellewell said its4women's high-tech offering was developed to support young drivers in getting on the road, while also allowing them access to competitive insurance that rewards safe driving.

She adds: “Rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach when risk-assessing young drivers, by allowing their driving to be monitored, our customers can be treated as individuals in line with their real-world driving behaviour. It means that premiums are no longer based solely on factors such as age, but rather are informed by data from telematics technology, thus enabling significant discounts to be offered to young motorists who drive safely.”