Just had a call from distressed Mum aged 83, she was T boned late last night by a young woman driver who seems to have been waiting to join the traffic then shot out of a side turning, bounced off Mum’s front N/S and shot though a fence into a field. It sounds as if she lost control of the car; she is insured with Insurethebox and said she has the telematics (not metrics) box fitted. Everybody at the scene was confused and couldn’t understand how the car ended up in the field. The website says it records “details of any accident” but how much detail? Throttle setting? Pedal positions? Direction of travel?

Mum was told by Police officer that her car was OK to drive (!!) so she struggled home but says the steering is bad and the wing and door damaged. She’s an IAM driver and good for her age but I guess no amount of experience can prepare you for someone losing control of their car.

I had one of these boxes fitted to my car as part of a trial, though the recorded data wasn’t sent to the insurance company. Recorded data included GPS speed, position, and 2D acceleration. That’s it.

No link to any car system, and they wouldn’t be able to do that anyway due to the risk of liability in an accident.

You don’t say who has the box fitted. Is it on the girl’s car or your mum’s?

The boxes can vary greatly. Some are fairly basic but others have full gps tracking, gyroscopic motion sensors, impact sensors & data collection from the vehicle’s ECU etc.

A fairly normal one fitted by insurance co’s would record enough to register acceleration, braking & cornering which can be very useful in determining what actually happened in an incident.

Edit:

Their website says this:

Accidents

In the event of an accident, information is collected to give a clear and accurate overview of the incident for insurance claim purposes. The data will include the:

Time and place of the accident
Force of impact on the vehicle
Direction of travel at the time of impact
Speed of the vehicle prior to and after the time of impact
Having an in-tele-box fitted also means we can help you if you have an accident, and track the location of your car if it is stolen. For more details please see Accident Alert and Theft Tracker.

Not the best but possibly enough to evidence their driver to be at fault in the circumstances you describe.

Dunno, but hope your Mum picks up and rest of process is relatively straightforward.

If you have the witness names I wouldn’t worry about it.

Yep – stuff that can be measured with accelerometers and GPS and little else!

Incidentally I work for an insurance company and they’re always called telematics.

Just called her and it turns out she shares the same insurer with the woman who hit her (who has the telematic box).

That ought to speed things up a bit.

That ought to speed things up a bit.

Fingers crossed that it does. My other half had an experience where her insurer couldn’t get money out of a third party’s insurer after an accident, resulting in them starting court proceedings. I had to call them to point out that it probably made more sense for them just to settle with themselves, rather than going to the trouble of taking themselves to court.