Hastings YouDrive cancelled my insurance citing harsh braking & acceleration

[Lambder]

If you cancel the policy yourself within a month it doesn't show on your record as being refused insurance. I got cheaper insurance from LV minus the black box. Loving my MG4 so far.

 

[gary333]

If you cancel the policy yourself within a month it doesn't show on your record as being refused insurance. I got cheaper insurance from LV minus the black box. Loving my MG4 so far.

If you are cancelling an insurance policy then it would never show as being refused, regardless of if it was day 1 or day 364 (unless I am missing some context here to what you mean).

 

[siteguru]

I think they meant if you cancel before the company gets a chance to cancel

 

[salty]

I think they meant if you cancel before the company gets a chance to cancel

That's cleared it up.

 

[Lambder]

This is what Hastings sent to me;

Thanks for contacting us about your policy. As requested, we've cancelled your car insurance from 11th May 2025.

As you cancelled the policy, you won't have to declare this cancellation with insurers in the future.

 

[Roger001]

I have the same device now fitted to my new MG4, as it has a motion sensor built in, it must be fixed to the windscreen (I've seen reports of people placing them loose in their glove box). It also makes sense to place them near the centre of the windscreen rather than at the edge, which their guide states. This should reduce the movement recorded from a wheel hitting a pothole or speed bump that does not cover the whole width of the road.

The app reports a person's score as a mix of

Phone usage
Speed
Braking
Acceleration
Cornering

So far, while my local roads are covered in speed bumps, I've not seen any lowering of my score even though I can drive over them at nearly 20mph. As for the other reporting categories, I never use a phone in a car, and my local main roads are so busy that speed and acceleration are just not a thing. It will be interesting to see what happens when I can clock some miles on a few road trips soon.

 

[Tomg4]

Why on earth would you voluntarily put something like that in your car?

 

[Roger001]

Why on earth would you voluntarily put something like that in your car?

Why not? I have no concerns about a third party scoring my driving style. The insurance was also far cheaper than the alternatives offered, as I do not have any NCD to apply to this car, as I am retaining my old car.

Also, I get to try the whole thing for free, as I can cancel during the cooling-off period for free if the scores do look bad. Also, as noted by others, I can cancel if the scoring system decides that it does not like me before Hastings can cancel at their end.

Don't forget it is a modern car, in terms of tracking data, it has a built-in sim that means certain aspects of my driving are recorded by the mobile phone network. At the same time, I have my own phone and a dash cam fitted. If the police were to get involved with any accident I was involved in, they have access to a lot of data about my driving, and that is before other drivers offer up their dash-cam footage.

 

[Tomg4]

Why not? I have no concerns about a third party scoring my driving style. The insurance was also far cheaper than the alternatives offered, as I do not have any NCD to apply to this car, as I am retaining my old car.

Also, I get to try the whole thing for free, as I can cancel during the cooling-off period for free if the scores do look bad. Also, as noted by others, I can cancel if the scoring system decides that it does not like me before Hastings can cancel at their end.

Don't forget it is a modern car, in terms of tracking data, it has a built-in sim that means certain aspects of my driving are recorded by the mobile phone network. At the same time, I have my own phone and a dash cam fitted. If the police were to get involved with any accident I was involved in, they have access to a lot of data about my driving, and that is before other drivers offer up their dash-cam footage.

Just look at some reply's in this topic. I think it describes perfectly why you don't want to have something like this in your car.

 

[Roger001]

Just look at some reply's in this topic. I think it describes perfectly why you don't want to have something like this in your car.

Something that I so far have seen no issues with, saved me a lot on my insurance and something I can cancel at any time.

Many people in this topic are raising concerns about a policy they have not read up on, and are raising possible issues about having it cancelled on them by the insurer. Hastings' own FAQ states the following

"But YouDrive isn't right for everyone. If your driving score is low, we may have to cancel your policy. If this happens, we'll give you the option of cancelling the policy yourself and you won't have to pay any cancellation fees or declare it to any new insurers."

What I can not say is how the original poster got into the position of being cancelled before being able to use their own ability to cancel.

 

[Tomg4]

Something that I so far have seen no issues with, saved me a lot on my insurance and something I can cancel at any time.

Many people in this topic are raising concerns about a policy they have not read up on, and are raising possible issues about having it cancelled on them by the insurer. Hastings' own FAQ states the following

"But YouDrive isn't right for everyone. If your driving score is low, we may have to cancel your policy. If this happens, we'll give you the option of cancelling the policy yourself and you won't have to pay any cancellation fees or declare it to any new insurers."

What I can not say is how the original poster got into the position of being cancelled before being able to use their own ability to cancel.

I think that's where you are wrong. They haven't made it cheaper, they just made the other insurance policy's more expensive. Now you think that you are getting some discount, at the expense of giving op your privacy to an insurance company. Who's business model is to spend as less insurance payout as possible. Now you've given them extra tools to do that

 

[Roger001]

I think that's where you are wrong. They haven't made it cheaper, they just made the other insurance policy's more expensive. Now you think that you are getting some discount, at the expense of giving op your privacy to an insurance company. Who's business model is to spend as less insurance payout as possible. Now you've given them extra tools to do that

That is the whole principle of insurance underwriting. If I can show that I am a lower risk client, I can expect the resulting premiums to be lower. The gadget is just the latest in a long list of innovations used in the underwriting process.

The only issue is one for the future, where the option for an individual to choose such insurance gets replaced with it becoming the only option, and that will be one for the government of the day to manage.

 

[Everest]

If I can show that I am a lower risk client, I can expect the resulting premiums to be lower.

If only.... that used to be the case for us females... but "the powers that be" stopped that

 

[Roger001]

If only.... that used to be the case for us females... but "the powers that be" stopped that

Well, you lost out on car insurance rates and gained on pension annuity rates when that bright idea was enforced

 

[Rolfe]

Pension annuity rates aren't worth having now in any case, and haven't been since about 2010.

 

[MelanieMoxon]

Their bar for harsh acceleration must be very low. I have driven cars with harsh acceleration...the MG4 (unless you have the X-Power) is not capable of harsh acceleration.

 

[Roger001]

Well, after a 100-mile road trip, I can report the following when driving my 77kWh MG4

First, some background about my driving. My daily runner for the last 32 years has been an MGB, so acceleration has never been a goal of my driving (0-60 in ~13 seconds unless I want to keep replacing the clutch and gearbox). However, the MGB has uprated front and rear brakes, so I have always been at risk of outbraking someone behind me, which means I never use hard braking if I can help it. So the MG4 is run in ECO mode with all the regen features enabled, I just do not need it to accelerate much.

1 x Acceleration warning.

This occurred during a hill start into a busy roundabout. To release the auto hold, you do seem to have to put your foot down, which then results in a burst of acceleration, even if it is only to 10-15 mph.

6 x braking (With the tag line of "Don't slam on the brakes").

2 of these came from braking for T junctions ( dropping from 50 to 0), and the others came from braking at roundabouts placed on fast dual carriageways (50 or 70). For all situations, I was travelling with the flow of traffic, which was braking in the same way. As for slamming on the brakes, I'm not even sure if the brakes were even used, as regen was doing its job.

Outcome - Hastings gives you a score based on your driving, and mine now sits at 78 out of 100. It seems that scores at or below 30 are where issues start

As far as I can tell, the data validation done by Hastings works for town driving and motorway driving, but it fails badly to take into account the vast numbers of roundabouts placed on the dual carriageway network. It is as if their calibration is based on everyday being a snow day.

I have a 200-mile run later this week and will try to report back what happens.

 

[siteguru]

Auto-hold ... you can press the brake pedal again to release auto-hold, and then gently press the accelerator.

Harsh regen braking could be overcome by using the A (adaptive) setting rather than the default level 3.

 

[Roger001]

Auto-hold ... you can press the brake pedal again to release auto-hold, and then gently press the accelerator.

Harsh regen braking could be overcome by using the A (adaptive) setting rather than the default level 3.

Those are the type of things I will be trying on my next run, but reducing the harshness of the regen braking will not help if I have to then just use the brakes instead. As I noted, I was braking with the flow of traffic, if I were to reduce the amount of braking, I would instead impact other drivers.

 

[pjmmk]

You'd have to drive as if you had a Faberge egg on your roof to get a good score on those things.