The Co-op launched its “black box” scheme in the UK mainland almost a year ago. A week later, Scotland was confusing the issue with ifs and buts about its own teenage crisis.
This story just came through on the news feeds. Northern Ireland is now considering black box 
technology to try to curb its own problems. Apparently, insurance in NI can be up to 70% higher than in the UK – which I’m sure is a meaningless statistic, since I doubt that this refers to the difference between the highest quotes in the UK and the lowest in NI (more likely, the lowest UK quote and the highest NI one).
What gets me about all these “initiatives” is that the stated target is to reduce insurance premiums.
What then happens is that once the insurance has been brought down, the little morons switch insurers (one without a black box requirement), and start driving like complete prats again.
Just like Pass Plus – when it still brought insurance down – people were doing it ONLY to get the insurance benefits. After that, they just drove like they would have done without having done the course at all. You even had “fit and proper” instructors signing it off without doing the driving, and even now you see instructors (and recently passed drivers) boasting that they “didn’t need to do much for Pass Plus because they’d already done it on their driving lessons”.
The Pass Plus syllabus is quite clear: it is additional training. Driving lesson experience cannot be included on it.
It’s also strange that NI is only “considering” doing it – and a year after everyone else. And that’s in spite of no legislation being needed to implement it.
It isn’t just the bad drivers who have got hold of the wrong end of the stick.