Iowa Insurance

It is a curve on the road near Alexander Mougin house in the outskirts of Oxford, Iowa. The Senior High School uses for me it is hard and sharp - but that was before his car was with a camera stock of the situation, his driving habits.

Mougin, 18, was participating in one of the study at the University of Iowa to see if the aircraft and provides data to help improve teen driving. The aircraft, which mirrors, with a goal of the road and another on drivers. It operates continuously, and place it in fashion, for example when the car accelerates or slows quickly suddenly. It remains about 10 seconds before and after the event, they adapt.

“They do not want to turn them off,” says Mougin. After 10 months after their participation in the study, he says, “I know I am a safe driver.”

Since Thursday, American Family Mutual Insurance Co., the nation 10 largest auto insurer, offer some of its customers the same system, known as DriveCam, in an effort to improve conduct for years adolescence, a population, is particularly at risk on the roads. More young people die in car crashes, as the sole or any other cause.

Customers with young children in Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin may require that the system installed in their cars for free at your disposal. Parents receive regular reports on incidents that trigger a disc, then the revision of their children.

The system, made by DriveCam Inc., a private company located in San Diego, is the latest in a series of tools that can help their parents, adolescents runway. ” For example, global positioning devices, parents can alarm if a car in a certain area. Other drivers may behave in general. “black boxes”, now in many new vehicles, you can enter data, such as quickly a car is in motion.

Until now, the system was DriveCam in commercial fleets. The transition to this type of equipment available to consumers on the resistance of people concerned about an intrusion into a private domain, once.

American Family obtain data aggregated from DriveCam, but there is no access to information on individuals. The company says it does not intend to see the videos can, if they could in a city of law. American Family also indicates, it is impossible to use the data in consultation and does not have enough information to be done, but it does not exclude the possibility that in the future.

“These are children safer driver,” said Jack Salzwedel, President of the American family, which is based in Madison, Wis. The question, as he says, the question is whether families have it is installed. “We have to see if this is something that parents can be,” he said.

In addition, a marketing tool, since parents generally buy auto insurance and DriveCam is not directly to individuals. American Family, west and the Middle west, is the largest auto insurer in Wisconsin, Minnesota, the second and fifth in Indiana, by AM Best Co. Salzwedel DriveCam Inc. provides the program as an opportunity for the company to differentiate from competitors.

If the program has reduced the number of breakdowns, which can be distributed to lower insurance. In 2005, the latest year for which data are available, nearly 5700 16 to 20 years died on the roads, according to the NHTSA, about 13 percent of all deaths blackout. Another disease, 53,000 were injured.