What Does A Typical Driving Report Card Look Like?

OK, so you get the gist of the usage-based driving program. How is it evaluated though? What factors are looked at? What does a driving report card look like?

Categories like acceleration, deceleration, turns, time of day, and speed are evaluated.

If you take advantage of the program, you will probably get a device that you can plug into a little port behind the steering wheel. That is all you need to get started. The machine will then transmit data wirelessly back to the company. Pretty cool, huh?

You will get regular report cards about your driving behavior. Your grades in the aforementioned categories will range from A to C. The company declined to flunk anyone, since they did not want to make anyone sad. The grades then get plugged into a formula that will determine discounts.

An above-average score on a report card might get you an annual discount  of over 20%.

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Right now, the major companies involved in the company are not penalizing people who sign up and end up being  bad drivers Participation is completely voluntary, and nearly 15% of customers at Progressive are enrolled already.

However, as more people sign up, the current rate will begin to feel like a penalty for people who do not want to participate. If every good driver participates in the program and qualifies for a lower price, the companies could eventually raise rates on people who are not participating yet. There is one feature that parents will like: You can usually your insurer’s data to monitor the driving of your teenager.

Why would someone not want to participate in the program?

The first reason is that not every insurance company has a version of the program yet.

The second reason is privacy. Who wants a big company to know every single thing about where they go and how they drive? Even though the major companies are not yet tracking exact locations, they want to, and Progressive is currently testing it. For example, a mile driving on a highway is a lot safer than a mile driving on a street. A lot of customers are already asking Progressive to track them this way.

For people with privacy concerns, it is hard to make a good case for usage-based insurance. If you care more about saving money than you do about privacy, and you are a good driver to boot, then you should love a program like this.

Still, some are worried about a driver score. The major companies involved in usage-based insurance say they do not want anything to do with that.www.easterninsuranceinc.com