JOHANNESBURG — Research shows that there is an enhancement in altruistic behaviour resulting from perceived observation. This is called the watching-eye effect, which is related to the Hawthorne effect that describes there is an observable change in behaviour when people are being watched. So when Themba Baloyi took the airplane ‘black box’ approach to driving cars, scientifically it made sense that driver behaviour would improve. But it did take nine forms of rejection before Discovery bought into his idea, and the numbers prove it was the right move. Since 2011 not a single Gold and Diamond status member has died or suffered serious injury while driving. Here’s Baloyi’s story. – Stuart Lowman
By Chris Bateman
A determined 42-year-old man of humble-origins whose rural grandmother instilled in him a fierce desire for education and problem solving was last week recognised as CNBC’s All Africa Entrepreneur of the Year for his pioneering, game-changing vehicle insurance model.
Themba Baloyi, Founder and Executive Director of Discovery Insure, disrupted the South African vehicle insurance market eight years ago by deploying the aircraft “black box”’ concept to digitally track and record the behaviour of member car drivers, incentivising them with fuel and cash-back rewards and premium discounts in their progress towards driving excellence. The data that Discovery Insure collected showed that good and excellent drivers had fewer and less severe accidents, resulting in 50% less pay-outs than poor and average drivers. Since 2011, not a single driver member on Gold and Diamond status has died or suffered serious injury in a car crash. They have a better collective record than Swiss drivers who have the lowest number of car crashes internationally. Discovery Insure has become an instant market leader, with Themba today firmly believing that it’s because they contribute towards solving a major societal problem – the estimated 17,000 people killed and 68,000 injured on South African roads each year.
“If you solve a problem it’s always good business. You won’t be profitable just because there’s a gap in the market. You must solve a genuine problem. I meet a lot of people chasing profitability and a gap but if you’re willing to pay for solutions, the numbers will come naturally. I got (Discovery co-founder) Adrian Gore’s ear by telling him I wanted to be involved with entities that really make a difference in people’s lives,” he recalls.
It took him over three years of punting his idea, born of watching a National Geographic TV documentary on major fatal aircraft crashes, to Discovery executives before the global economic climate tilted in his favour, giving him the chance to present a full business plan. He had by then had his idea rejected nine times, but kept faith and conviction, building solid evidence.
“The aircraft industry could reconstruct how crashes happened, train their pilots better and improve the general safety of aircraft. I began looking for similar devices in other high-risk environments and found Formula One racing where telemetry had resulted in the lowest crash rates per 1,000 km travelled – despite the incredibly high speeds. They had to be doing something right and so I came up with telematics,” he says.
Enhancing the concept as a force for good, Discovery Insure today underpins the Safe Travel to School pilot programme in Cape Town where 800 drivers with Discovery DQ Trackers fitted, transport 18,000 children to school daily – with not a single injury or fatality in five years of operation so far. Drivers get cash and fuel voucher prizes quarterly and the two top scorers a brand new seven-seater vehicle annually. With 10,000 unintentionally injured children admitted to the Red Cross Children’s War Memorial Hospital in Rondebosch annually, most of them in car crashes, the resident surgeons and local parents are more than grateful to a young lad who once wondered why the rural bus drivers treated their passengers with such disdain.
