More the safety/security features, less the insurance premium???

[deky]

Scenario 1: You have to park your car outside your house in the night. A car thief tries to steal your car but cant as you have gear lock installed. VOILA!!! you just saved a lot of money to the insurance company. But does the insurance company appreciate that you have this security feature in your car?

Scenario 2: You driving 100kmph on a highway, you see a trucker suddenly swerve in front of you, you hit the breaks and your car stops in the same lane in which it was travelling. Thank god you didnt skid into the divider or were not hit from behind as you skidded. Your car has ABS. WOW!! you save more money to the insurance company. But again does your insurance company thank you for having safety features?

Now to the discussion:-

While talking about cars to a friend of mine who has been living in Tokyo for some time now, the topic of insurance came up. He suggested that in Tokyo the more the safety and security features your car has, the less the insurance premium of your car.

Infact this statement seemed quite logical as more safety features, like airbags, ABS etc etc, will decrease the possibility of personnal injury in case of accidents and more security features like gear lock, auto cop etc etc, will decrease the possiblity of the car being stolen. Hence the possiblity of the insurance company compensating you decreases, which in turn should result in the company demanding less premium from you.

Now a few questions:-

1. Do the insurance companies have this policy in India?

2. If they have, IMO getting a gear lock installed in our car or paying extra for a car with AIRBAGS should not matter much as, we will be able to recover the amount with the insurance benefits we get.

Woud love to have your guys opinion on this.

[laluks]

This is exactly what is being discussed currently. Since the Airbags/ABS are all costly the Indian concumers prefer to have some ICE for that money.

To make the safety utmost concern, there were quite a lot of discussion with to make insurance come down, but the final outcome I do not know.

I can say this much because I work in the area of safety systems in cars, and to tap Indian markets and the price conscious customer to look at safety - we need such a line of thought pretty soon.

[Tejas@perioimpl]

I agree with you about airbags and stuff. But gearlocks will leave a lot of discrepancy... if a car with the lock got stolen then what? the company will say that you did not use it in the first place, just bought it to reduce premium. insurance companies just need an excuse not to pay.
Infact they may go the other way around saying that cars without autocop,etc should pay a higher premium... there is no way that they will reduce their money inflow.

[anujmishra]

if central locking system (Autocop) installed then they do charge insurance premium less than what it would be without autocop. Price of autocop is not included while calculating insurance premium.

ABS should also be considered for this, but having ABS and EBD in a car increase its price by 30000 to 50000 depending upon models of car. So the insurance premium gets calculated based on the actual car price. Remember it is standard fitment of car and adds value to car.

Regarding gear lock, I do not think insurance company will consider this.
How would one ensure that everytime driver gets out of car, he/she should put gear lock? This is not an automatic procedure.

[nishantgandhi]

Car Insurance has a clause for reduction in premium if you have ARAI approved anti theft devices.

[rjvora_2000]

Wow such a brilliant discussion…

Answer to your query: - In India insurance companies have been charging differently if Anti-theft device is installed in the car. But they have to be registered device from RTO. (They give discount of Rs. 500)

[abhinav.gupta88]

Well nice thought buddy.
It should be a rule to charge lower premium when you have security features in the car.
But with the garage thing you are talking about, what if the people charge less and the owners dont put them in the garage itself.

[appuchan]

It makes sense to have reduced premiums for cars with "inbuilt and automatically activated" security and safety features such as engine immob, alarm system, ABS, Airbags, etc. It will be difficult to monitor the usage of other "optional" security accessories such as steering/gear lock etc.

Else special cases such as removal of wheels, emptying fuel etc should reduce the premiums further!

[deky]

I have also heared that in some countries , lower the emmision level of the car, lower is the registeration charges. Makes a lot of sense.