Taxi Firms Cutting Their Insurance Premiums
A taxi company based in the north east of England has suffered an insurance premium hike in the past 3 years, seeing an increase of 200%. The firm has decided to install state of the art CCTV equipment in its taxi fleet in an attempt to dramatically cut the cost of their insurance premiums. The firm in question, C&D Taxis, which is based across Tyne & Wear, has appointed security experts Hadrian Technology to install the cameras to their vehicles. The CCTV will record footage from inside and outside the taxis, keeping a comprehensive archive of what’s going on, which is what is going to help reduce the insurance premiums.
The cameras are branded ‘Cygnus’, and will capture the taxi driver’s view of the road as well as the inside and the rear of the vehicle. These cameras will do a great job in protecting the firm against staged accidents such as fraudulent whiplash claims and the currently popular ‘flash-for-cash’ insurance scam. They will also help with driving offences and traffic allegations, all of which work towards their favour when lowering their insurance premiums.
C&D’s owner Chris Waterstreet said: “CCTV will provide me with evidence of what happens in my taxis. After the initial installation costs, I will re-coup the cost in just one or two years. I won’t get bogged down with lengthy and expensive investigations when someone makes a claim and hopefully my insurance premium will stop rising each year. At the moment when someone makes a claim, we have no evidence to find out the truth and my insurance company always has to pay out. One insurance company is knocking £500 off taxi insurance premiums if you have CCTV installed. My colleagues and customers will feel safer when I have these cameras in. For me, I will be saving money and hassle every day. I would certainly recommend it to other taxi drivers out there.”
What makes these cameras from Hadrian so effective is that the video footage is not destroyed if a potential criminal rips the camera off the taxi. The video file is stored elsewhere in the vehicle that the criminal will not be able to find. This technology could do wonders to limit the number of petty and serious crimes alike, from not paying a fare to a serious assault charge.
James Savery, 18 September 2013