Drivers can save by letting Big Brother ride

[gone-ot]

...uh, (humor): "...right idea, wrong finger UP!.."

[fidalgoman]

Privacy is only an issue for people who seek to live a self determined life. I think you might enjoy this news article of TomTom selling you out. LINK IMHO it's coming to the point where Big Bro' is going to start slapping our Nads for just about everything or we're going to have to start slapping his.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

But I really do behave. So it'll pay off.

Just got my 30% off notification

[Frank Lee]

I have access to the data they've collected too. I log on to my account at Progressive and can see charted number of trips/day, trip length in time and miles, and whether there were any stops exceeding 7 mph/sec.

[UFO]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I have access to the data they've collected too. I log on to my account at Progressive and can see charted number of trips/day, trip length in time and miles, and whether there were any stops exceeding 7 mph/sec.

Aha, of course this would be an insightful piece of data.

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I have access to the data they've collected too. I log on to my account at Progressive and can see charted number of trips/day, trip length in time and miles, and whether there were any stops exceeding 7 mph/sec.

...just two little questions:

1) how often/recent are the Progressive™ systems "calibrated" for speed and acceleration changes?

2) do those "...stops exceeding 7 mph/sec..." also flag exactly WHO actually caused the sudden reduction in speed--you or something/someone else?

[Frank Lee]

1) dunno
2) doubt it

[dcb]

Well that is good to know. I don't know exactly how fast I slow down, but traffic permitting I do slow down quickly and early to conserve momentum (brake a little and early rather than a lot and late). If you are coming to an obstruction that needs time to clear (and you have some hope of timing your arrival when it just clears) this is the most efficient method I know of, not a long slow decel but a quick speed adjustment as soon as possible. So they will reward people for not driving efficiently if 7mph/sec is a violation in their eyes (about 0.3G?)

I understand the intent, but I likely will save vastly more money being a good hypermiler and not worrying about what the out of touch bean counters dreamed up as metrics

[dcb]

little more investigation,
FAQs: Snapshot Discount, Pay As You Drive®, Usage-Based Insurance
needs your obd port, 1996 or newer, might not work with scangauge et. al.
not available in all states.

if you drive between midnight and 4AM you will probably get dinged, not my issue but I feel for the guy/gal who is working the graveyard shift.

if you drive a lot you can get dinged, that much makes sense.

if you have a lot of "hard stops" you can get dinged. Since many hypermilers do this deliberately when approaching red lights/trains/etc and when nobody is on their tail then it could be a detractor. Also a quick early stab at the brakes to time the clearing of an obstruction will create less heat/wear than a long slow application (as evidenced by the retention of energy/momentum).

It is Not GPS based, so they don't have enough resolution to detect minor traffic violations. They might get suspicious if you drive 10k miles without ever coming to a complete stop though, or log anything over 100mph, and I'm sure they will notice if you are unplugging it a lot or disconnecting your battery a lot, will probably void that discount period. Probably not for the weekend racer for that matter.

I don't know what wireless protocol it uses, probably cell based, so they may have access to some low resolution location (<1.5 mile radius) data. The metrics they call out can also be done with just an accelerometer and clock and not need the obd port, and it might actually have those to be redundant to assist with tamper detection, not foolproof but will thwart the majority of attempts, and not AS big brother as GPS and the tomtom fiasco, but still moving in the big brother direction.

I like the comment on priuschat
"I had Progressive for many years.
I found out why they call them Progressive.
Progressive is how your rates escalate every 6 months."
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-p...ml#post1325703

And of course if progressive is tracking speed/etc then they can be subpoena'd and become a genuine big brother tool in an instant.

[t vago]

Originally Posted by dcb

if you drive between midnight and 4AM you will probably get dinged, not my issue but I feel for the guy/gal who is working the graveyard shift.

Did they give a rationale for dinging the graveyard shifter? I would'a though that, all things being equal, it would actually be safer to drive during those times when all you have to worry about is the occasional drunk driver. Daytime drivers scare me.

Originally Posted by dcb

if you drive a lot you can get dinged, that much makes sense.

I'm glad it makes sense to you, because I can't figure it out. I would have thought that actual accident history would have made one much more likely to be dinged.