An over-reliance on blunt proxies. That’s what’s wrong with everyone’s approach to young drivers. But more of that anon. First, let’s re-cap where we are today with young drivers.
Fact: as everyone knows, young people are a complete bloody menace – young men in particular. Abolishing them altogther would almost certainly provoke some kind of public outcry. So the best we can realistically do as a society is to neutralise them through a regime of tough sanctions, restrictions and disincentives.
A new survey from insurer body the ABI has revealed that 76% of Brits (i.e. everyone over 18) believes young drivers should have their licenses restricted after passing their test. Seventy-one percent thought there should be a limit on the number of passengers they are allowed to carry.
In this respect, at least, the will of the majority may soon acquire the force of the law, with Transpo Sec Patrick Macnee considering banning young ’uns from driving anyone else – bar possibly their mums or dads. Other popular options include banning youngsters from driving after dark, outside a 10 mile radius from home, at the weekend, with the radio on, whilst having fun, and under any circumstances whatsoever.
All perfectly reasonable, you are probably thinking, but what about that proxy business we began with? Proxy, it turns out, is the favourite word of Lenten Holiday CEO of MyDrivel Solutions (yes, there are still companies with Solutions in their name!), who sadly shows no convincing sign of having the faintest idea what it means.
Holiday also quite likes the word protocol, but says “the current protocol isn’t best suited for inexperienced drivers”. Bankstone News already knows exactly what he’s on about. But just in case you, Dear Reader, haven’t quite grasped it yet, he goes on to clarify that “imposing curfews or restricting passengers is merely adding yet another blunt proxy to an already limited approach to improving driver behaviour.”
Holiday complains that “automotive insurance companies and government initiatives” simply don’t get “the evolving technology surrounding driver behaviour”. Young drivers aren’t so bad, after all, he argues, but are being needlessly priced out of the market by premiums “that have been defined by predetermined proxies, whether that be age, gender, location or marital status”.
What’s called for, clearly, is a fresh set of proxies. Happily, Holiday reckons he has a solution – more one than one, presumably, if the name of his company is anything to go by. This solution “simply allows those proxies to be at worst augmented, and at best radically changed”. Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it!
Can you guess what MyDrivel Solutions are selling yet? That’s right it’s good ol’ telematics again!
Lenten Holiday invents the wheel in the Cone Brothers' hit movie The Kidtracker Proxy
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