Usage or (lack therof) Discount

[rjundi]

My insurer the not so loved Progressive has a new discount program. Basically they send you a device called snapshot(GPS tracker I assume) and it keeps track of your driving patterns habits initially for 30 days. It gives a preliminary discount of 0 - 30%. After that you drive with it for 5 months and send it back in for final analysis and discount.

I have a feeling my habits would save me but don't like the monitoring. Then again my Android based cell phone is pumping the info out anyway...

 

[Quattro Pete]

How does it attach to the car? Can you freely take it out whenever you don't want to be monitored?

 

[eljefino]

It's an OBDII datalogger.

 

[PandaBear]

What if your car is not OBDII?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Quote:
(GPS tracker I assume)


It's not a GPS tracker. It connects to the OBD2 port, so it collects speed info from one of the car's sensors.

Quote:

We won’t share Snapshot data with a third party unless it’s required to service your insurance policy, prevent fraud, perform research or comply with the law.

The Snapshot device doesn't contain GPS technology or track vehicle location. It also doesn't track whether you're exceeding the speed limit.


Even though they say they don't track whether you're exceeding the speed limit, they do track the actual speed, so if you happen to drive 80 mph in a state that has a maximum speed limit of 65 mph, that's exceeding the speed limit. And if Police asks them for your records, I'm sure they'll be happy to supply them. No thanks. Not that I speed, or anything, but sometimes things happen...

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: PandaBear
What if your car is not OBDII?

Then you can't use the Snapshot.

 

[dparm]

I enjoy WOT sometimes...I think I'd rather the insurance company not know that. Plus, what would they think when I race legitimately on a track?

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Plus, what would they think when I race legitimately on a track?

They'd probably try to sell you track insurance.

 

[JHZR2]

On the other hand, what about a seldom-used car that is generally garaged. Might not be used for 30 days! What is the max discount?

 

[benjamming]

As with credit cards, you can use this to your advantage. Can you drive like grandma for 6 months? How often will they require you to update the data? Do you have another car so that this one will get very little mileage?

With that said, I wouldn't use it voluntarily.

 

[eljefino]

The OBDII port has a couple pins that are always hot, couple others are live with data when the car is running. What's to stop someone from plugging the thing into power, so it logs it's "plugged in", then saying oh yeah my car stays in the garage because I ride my bicycle all the time to save the planet?

Only one of my four cars has OBDII, and it's my boring gas saver, but the potential savings is less than a tank of gas per year. They haven't asked me yet, BTW.

 

[opus1]

Wouldn't they be able to find the power-loss when you unplug it, unless you create some sort of pass-through plug that you could use to plug the thing into the car occasionally to show use.

However, what happens if you get in an accident and the thing *isn't* in your car at the time. That could be a bit sticky, and in fact I had a friend run into the low-tech version of this. She was getting a discount for low-mileage on her car because she took the train to work, then decided the train was too much hassle and started driving downtown. Got into an accident and the insurance company started questioning the mileage the shop reported vs. the mileage they were estimating and she was self-reporting when they had her check-in. They came close to dropping her for that.

But back on-topic, I guess this is Progressive's attempt to compete with State Farm's deal with On-Star? Which I took advantage of with the Cobalt, BTW, since it is my low-use vehicle. I'll see what impact this has when I get my next premium bill, which, come to think of it, should be any day now.