Motability update

Wibbles

Motability drivers will no longer need to have a black box fitted to their vehicles following criticism from users affected by the rule changes.

The Motability scheme - where certain disability benefits can be exchanged for a lease on a vehicle - had made the black boxes compulsory for new leaseholders, and all drivers aged under 30, in April.

Mary_Scope

This is good news @Wibbles! Thank you for sharing

Holly_Alumni

I do sometimes wonder if they announce these things to gauge public opinion first.

66Mustang

I was one of the people who tested Drive Smart a few years ago when it was being developed and while the idea was good, the implementation wasn't

It criticised me for stuff like braking too hard when a car pulled out of a side road in front of me. It also wanted me to accelerate gradually to save fuel, again a reasonable proposal. Sadly, the only level of acceleration it told me was "okay" was even slower than a lorry would accelerate - again, unsafe in many situations

It was quite fun to try to get my score up and overall having a better score did correlate with better fuel economy, smoothness and safety. The situations I mention above are very much edge cases. However the critical point here is that it uses the law of averages. Those edge cases (like cars pulling out in front of you) are rather important and crashing into a car once because you're encouraged not to brake isn't compensated for by even a lifetime of smooth/economical driving

WelshBlue

I'm glad. Telematics are all well and good but for some of the reasons @66Mustang stated driving is about the unexpected and having to take evasive action because of other drivers/pedestrians etc when needed. All which would raise red flags. Why else would they have hazard perception in theory tests if it was as simple as sitting there and pressing go