Whilst pondering my car insurance renewal options for this year I noticed that Aviva were advertising their free Aviva Drive app, which they say will save money for safer drivers. Specifically:
Safer drivers who score over 7.1 could save an average of £150 on our comprehensive car insurance – a saving which we expect 44% of safer drivers to get.Could this be true? Searching the internet I couldn't actually find reports from anyone who has used the app and saved money, though I did find a forum containing users who were competing to get the worst possible score. So, reassured by Aviva's statement that bad drivers aren't penalised, I started the experiment.
After installation on your smartphone the app needs to monitor your driving for 200 miles to determine your driving score. With my 50-ish mile daily commute to and from London I had a week of careful driving to look forward to. My route is almost entirely along motorways and major A roads, with few bends or traffic lights, and normally quite light traffic. However, due to discovering this app only a week before my renewal was due, I was forced to use this on the busiest traffic week of the year. This resulted in lots of stop-start traffic and jam-avoiding circuitous routes along back streets. Could I still achieve a good driving score against these odds?
The app measures how smoothly you accelerate, brake and corner. I imagined a passenger holding an almost overflowing coffee cup as I drove, and I attempted to eliminate all jerky actions to avoid any spillage. For situations like this a lumbering, heavy truck would be much better than a nippy small car with sports suspension. Unfortunately I had the latter, so I needed tricks such as getting behind lumbering, heavy vehicles to force myself to accelerate slowly. I used cruise control as much as possible, not just for keeping a steady speed but also to slow down and speed up in 1 mph increments.
So, after a week of being the slowest away at traffic lights, and slowing down for roundabouts half a mile in advance, I was quite happy to finish with a score of 9.6 out of 10. This took 14%, or about £45 off my renewal for this year, and apparently I shall receive some discount every year. Drivers with a higher initial premium can save up to 28%, which really is substantial.
Most of my small driving behaviour modifications were the same as I'd do if I was hypermiling, and I did achieve some corresponding improvements to my fuel usage, going from around 45 mpg to about 50 mpg. Interestingly, my journey times were only modestly affected, despite feeling much slower than everyone else on the road. I won't make these changes permanent, though, as they do take a little bit of the fun out of being on the road.