Esurance Tracks Teen Drivers in Appeal to Parents
By Alexandria
Baca Dec 18, 2013 12:24 PM PT
The Esurance DriveSafe device being installed in a car dashboard.
Esurance, the
car insurer owned by http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-18/esurance-tracks-teen-drivers-in-appeal-to-parents.htmlAllstate Corp.
(ALL), is seeking to appeal to parents with technology that can
disable their children’s mobile phones when they are behind the wheel and
provide warnings when they drive too fast.
DriveSafe, available
for free to Esurance policyholders who list teens on their plan, consists of a
device installed in the car and a smartphone application, according to a
statement from the company. Esurance, owned by Northbrook, Illinois-based
Allstate Corp., focuses on sales through the Internet, rather than by agents.
Auto-insurance
companies have turned to technology to encourage safer driving and, in some
cases, help set rates. Progressive Corp.’s Snapshot collects data that is used
to give discounts to the safest customers. Esurance, which also offers a usage-based
discount program, won’t use data collected by the teen-safety
program to set rates, said Danny Miller, a spokesman for the company.
DriveSafe “can
help stop teens from texting while driving and make parents and their teens
aware of, and hopefully reduce, risky driving behavior,” Esurance Chief
Executive Officer Gary Tolman said in the statement.
Phones would
still be able to call 911 to report emergencies. Trip summaries are typically
available to parents by computer within 5 minutes of the end of a trip, Miller
said.
Privacy Concerns
Some drivers
have shunned technology tracking behavior amid privacy concerns, Progressive
CEO Glenn Renwick said in a conference call Aug. 8. He said about 40 percent of
prospective Snapshot customers said “no way in hell” would they agree to the
device. The remaining 60 percent were divided among people immediately
receptive to the technology and those who wanted to know more, he said.
Allstate, the
largest publicly traded U.S. home and auto insurer, had been losing customers
for its namesake brand of auto policies when CEO Thomas Wilson bought Esurance
in 2011. Miller declined to comment on how many Esurance policies list teens or
how much the company invested in the DriveSafe program.
New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo today announced the approval of the program by his state’s
Department of Financial Services.
“A combination of
inattention and inexperience has far too often produced tragic results for
teenage drivers,” he said in the statement.
To contact the
reporter on this story: Alexandria Baca in New York at abaca3@bloomberg.net
To contact the
editor responsible for this story: Dan Kraut at dkraut2@bloomberg.net
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