Driving Motorvation: Insurance with a Difference

It was a cold, blustery and ironically sunny day that I found myself at ten o’clock in the morning, somewhere I never thought I’d be… Attending the launch of a new insurance product. Now loyal DriveRSA fans don’t close your browser for fear of being bored to death for the next five minutes, because this is no ordinary insurance product. It is in fact the first indicator ever recorded by man that an insurance company is not in fact staffed and run entirely by the Legion of Doom, but rather actual human beings who understand life is not all check boxes, filing and filling everything out in triplicate.

Now the day consisted of two parts. Firstly a traditional presentation portion and secondly the chance to experience some advanced driving with recorded telemetry. Of course they had cunningly put the presentation first so that people didn’t scatter like a herd of impala at the mention of the word “Powerpoint”, and luckily for you I actually paid attention while quickly brushing up on my management 101 speak to be able to translate for all us normal people who don’t live our lives by Excel spreadsheet.

So as I just mentioned, this insurance scheme, aptly named “Discovery Insurance and VitalityDrive” actually seems to make sense and really roles of the tongue. What you need to take note of here ladies and gentlemen is the “VitalityDrive” part of all that. You see, this like all the other “Vitality” products that Discovery offers is what I like to call an, And Also product, where not only do you get car and household insurance, but you get many other benefits on top.

These benefits are fairly enticing and make great sense to the average South African motorist. First off, as a member you will need what is termed as a “Driver Quotient”. This is basically a measure of how you safely you drive and is achieved through a number of methods, including taking your car for a multipoint inspection and proving it is serviced at regular intervals. However the best and effective way to earn these DQ points is simply by driving safely.

Now obviously there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell that Discovery will take your word for it that you’ll suddenly be a virtue of perfection and excellence on our roads. So every car on VitalityDrive will be fitted with a glorified black box that records real time data, including speeds, braking harshness and G force telemetry. With this data you’ll build up a driver profile, where driving safely will decrease your premiums and make you a much happier person. Of course my first question was whether or not the police could get their hands on this data and suddenly you’ll end up with quite a lot more post than you’re used to getting, however they quickly pointed out to me that should that scenario happen, Discovery would start losing customers very quickly indeed and therefore is certainly not in their best interest. Now there are more benefits involved, including things like significant fuel savings to be gained from using your Discovery card to pay, however for all that in detail, I’d recommend you take a stroll over to their website where all the relevant information may be gleaned.

Right. The exciting bit. Thankfully Discovery had provided something special for everyone to test their DQ in, ratherthan something crummy, like the hateful new Polo or worse the new Micra. Yes Discovery had in fact organized the wonderful people from the Mercedes-Benz AMG Driving School to pop round and bring a few of their E63 AMG Mercs with them.

Now I’m going to try limit myself here as best I can to talking about the product, rather than the monstrous powerhouse that is the E63. Needless to say however that the car is truly amazing, a machine for all occasions and one that with even the slightest twitch of your right foot, will reach down your trousers and have a good rummage around. So the car was excellent then, but what about the tests. Well first off was the skid pan. For us there was no tail out, sliding around hooliganism, we were here to learn and boy did I learn!

Specially fitted to our Mercs was a button only bestowed upon those used for advanced driving courses and what this button does is something quite scary. In a real wheel drive car, producing 386kw and sounding like thunder, this button turns all driver aides off and I really do mean all as it including disabling of the ABS. With all these aides turned off, it really did illustrate, even just braking from 60 in the wet how little control over the vehicle you have and while with the proper training you can avoid the accident, trust me, you want the electronic safety net in place.

Our last little excursion was to take the car for a three lap blast round the Kyalami Grand Prix circuit. With the guidance of an instructor this was an absolute blast, however with the black box fitted to the cars it meant that every person who drove the vehicle could come back and identify their trip and telemetry incredibly accurately, leaving no doubt in my mind that from a technical stand point the system works.

As for this new scheme, well I’m completely in support of it. I fully believe drivers should be rewarded based on the way they drive rather than how old they are etc. and while the traditional factors are still in play, the fact that the focus is on you as an individual means you have much better control over the amount of money you spend on insurance.

For more information on these and other Discovery products, head over to www.discovery.co.za

Nick Hodgson