WENDY KNOWLER | Wyze up on crash data technology

Did you know your car’s airbag data can tell accident investigators exactly how you were driving at the time you crashed your car?

What speed you were doing in the seconds before impact, how harshly you braked, if at all, even whether you were wearing your seatbelt — all that information can be extracted by means of Crash Data Retrieval (CDR) tools, thanks to airbag sensors. And that’s very handy for insurance companies.

In SA, it’s typically cars manufactured from 2016 onwards that can reveal how well or badly you were driving.

But other forms of technology also provide solid evidence of who the “guilty” parties were in a motor vehicle accident.

CCTV cameras, cellphone cameras, dashcams (in vehicle cameras) and tracking devices are all capable of capturing exactly what happened. That evidence could work for or against you in a legal or insurance case. When it comes to motor insurance claims, ideally we should all have dashcams in our cars to capture our own visual evidence — they cost anything from R2,000 for the Chinese cheapies to about R8,000 for the good ones.

What got me thinking about these things was a case I dealt with recently. A man I’ll call Dan wrote to me about his motor vehicle claim which was rejected by Iwzye — part of Old Mutual Insure.

His sister-in-law had been driving his daughter to school in his SUV at the end of August when she collided with a minibus taxi at an intersection. She’d stopped at the stop street, she said, but the minibus driver had not.

While she was authorised to drive the car, the claim was rejected on the grounds of what the insurer termed “gross negligence”.

How so, if she’d stopped at the stop street and the minibus driver hadn’t?

She may have felt she had stopped at the sign, but she’d merely slowed down before continuing, and then, spotting the minibus driver had not stopped at his stop sign at all, she accelerated to avoid him. Sadly, the two vehicles collided.

And the insurer knows this because of hard evidence: CCTV camera footage and accident information from the car itself.

But Dan was having none of it. “I have been paying my premium every month without interruption since December 2021,” he said.

“Based on the footage of the accident they said she didn't completely stop and they rejected the claim based on that.

“Please help to ask Iwyze to review the claim.”

Having had a look at the two pieces of evidence, I knew there was no merit in that. The driver did not come to a complete stop at the stop street, hence she broke the law. Yes, the minibus driver coming from her right side didn’t either — he didn’t even slow down as she did, but her failure is stop is all that’s needed for a valid claim rejection.

I advised him to lodge a complaint with the Ombudsman for Short-Term Insurance — a free, independent mediation service, but I’m not hopeful of a different outcome.

And I approached Old Mutual Insure to ask a few questions about the role of technology in accident analysis and how the assessors got hold of it.

Was that CCTV footage obtained from a company near that intersection which has security CCTV cameras installed on the exterior of their premises? Do assessors look for such cameras at accident sites and ask the owners of the company concerned to scan their footage and release to the insurer the relevant section?

As for the evidence which came from the car itself — was this extracted from an after-market tracking device fitted to the car at the behest of Iwyze or from the car itself?

Does IWyze ask for permission from the insured to obtain such information or do the policy’s T&Cs grant the insurer such right?

Responding, Old Mutual Insure said it relied on various forms of evidence in assessing accident claims, including video footage, police accident reports, witness statements and event data directly extracted from the incident vehicle.

“Our preference in terms of intersection accidents is to secure verifiable data that is not dependent of the version of the parties. While the evaluation process is rigorous, external information obtained is done with the customer’s consent.”

And how is that consent obtained?

“This consent is obtained at point of sale when the policy is purchased and noted in our policy contract as well as when the customer registers a claim.”

Dan had no idea where the report revealing that his sister-in-law didn’t come to a complete stop in the seconds before the crash came from.

It records the car’s speeds in the five seconds before impact, the slowest being 5km/h as she approached the stop-street and 17km/h as the two vehicles collided, given that she’d been accelerating to avoid the minibus taxi.

“I don’t have a tracking device in the car so the information must have come from the car itself.”

Commenting on the consent issue, ace forensic accident investigator Craig Proctor-Parker said most insurance policy documents merely require drivers to consent to investigations being undertaken in the event of an accident claim. Legal challenges had been mounted in other countries on the premise that specific consent should be required to access a car’s so-called Event Data Recorder (EDR).

Iwyze revealed it was Dan who obtained CCTV footage of the accident, apparently unaware that failure to come to a total dead stop at an intersection is grounds to reject an accident claim.

Bottom line — You can’t argue with technology — know that sometimes it works in your favour but if you didn’t meticulously stick to the rules of the road at the time of an accident that tech will burn you.

And get out of the habit of those “rolling” stop street stops.

It’s no use saying you were doing 125km/h at the time of the accident if you were doing about 180km/h. Your car’s airbags will expose your lie.

If you file an accident claim and your car is a newish one, ask your insurer specific questions about accessing the car’s EDR and how they intend to do it.

Strictly speaking, says Proctor-Parker, insurers should only use tools approved by the car’s manufacturer, but that doesn’t happen in every case.

It's definitely worth a bit of prodding about that, methinks!

• GET IN TOUCH: You can contact Wendy Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or on Twitter: @wendyknowler.