It’s a good thing ! The ultimate car technology enabled driver safety feature is here. GPS has been used in fleet vehicles for 20 years and has been proven to increase operational efficiency and improve both driver behaviour and driver safety. And it’s certainly been one contributing factor to the steady reduction in car accidents and collision claims – great news for insurance companies, extremely bad news for the collision repair sector!
Now GPS is about to enable a quantum leap in car accident response, and this could again impact on the collision repair supply chain. European car brands have experimented with ‘connectivity’ for more than a decade but the technology is now so commoditised that it’s becoming mainstream. This means that impact sensors and alerts can be GPS/internet linked and automated messages triggered to virtually any nominated party – from Fleet Services Managers to emergency services (Police, ambulance, towing firms) – including Crash Management of course.
Potentially this could disintermediate insurers to some degree – this would significantly alter the current balance of power enjoyed by insurance companies, as well as improving emergency response times and saving lives. With 300 kiwis killed in car crashes already in 2015, the technology can’t get here fast enough. Drive carefully this summer New Zealand, saving 5 minutes getting to the beach is not worth the risk of a car accident, or another car insurance claim, or the potential to injure yourself or others.
Villliami
Your right this would be big improvement to phoning insurance companys about a accident claim and waiting for call centre answering. Crash Management does a much better job and the GPS responding would be awesome especially far away from home. This is interesting thank you
Terri
GPS is a must for any fleet operator, the data is invaluable to us. It also assist our fleet services provider to optimise the fleet structure and utilisation. Crash Management incident reporting data has also been very illustrative so we now have a clearer understanding of how,when and why car accidents occur which has produced better results in minimising accident claims than the driver training programmes we’ve run in the past. All fleet management services should retrofit GPS if the vehicle doesn’t already have one, it’s a great benchmarking tool and will also deliver on driver safety. Linked with Crash Management’s rescue & repatriation plan for our fleet GPS also helps support our OSH obligations too. The GPS supported “impact alert” direct to our fleet management provider and Crash Management will be a significant advancement, we look forward to hearing more about this.
Justin Kane
Reducing accidents is a positive for the public as you say but another nail in the coffin for the panelbeating trade. We’re totally dominated by insurance companies, some are worse than others but all the contracts are harsh. They basically own the repair shops now without the cost of buying them. Fleet management work is now more profitable than insurance claims because insurers dictate unrealistic repair times then compound it by paying less than $60 an hour. You can’t pay a tradesman $30 an hour on a charge out rate of $55, but the insurance industry is such a manopoly they impose this regime and just don’t care what its done to the trade. There have been more panelshop closures since insurance company contracts came in than ever before. At least 20 good shops in the last two years alone that I know. As well as this service to customers has slid away because they’re forced to wait weeks for a repairer their insurance company ‘approves’ of, its crazy when half the shops (good shops I mean) don’t have enough work. Maybe this technology will start to shift power away from them back to the customer and hopefully the panel and paint trade too!
Bruce B
You forget though mate, there would be no car insurance claims without NZI. So they are the customer.