With a traditional black box and telematics car insurance policy, your insurance provider will send out an engineer to fit the black box behind your car’s dashboard. It will usually take about an hour to install and you may need to present your driving licence and V5C registration document.  There are several types of telematic devices, the main ones being: The black box will automatically start recording your driving, so you don’t need to switch it on. If you choose a plug-and-drive device, you’ll be able to install this yourself by plugging it into the charger port.  With a smartphone app, there’s no installation at all. You simply follow instructions to download the app onto your smartphone. In some cases, you’ll have to start the app before your journey.