Auto Insurance Trackers for Safe Driving Discounts

Spending too much money on your auto insurance? If you’re a good driver, you probably are. While accident-free or infrequent drivers are often eligible for discounts on their car insurance premiums, your quality of driving and risk of accident is usually based on national accident averages correlating with certain statistics. Insurance companies determine what you pay based on your age, gender, marital status, location and vehicle. Over the years, auto insurance companies have sought a better way to personalize insurance premium pricing, and technology has finally provided an answer. Several pilot programs with auto insurance trackers, small devices that analyze your driving safety have begun this year. At Accurate Auto Body, where we process auto body repair insurance claims every day, we’ve been watching the roll-out of auto insurance trackers very closely.

How Auto Insurance Trackers Work

The insurance buyer receives a small electronic device that they plug into the car’s diagnostics port, a feature in every car manufactured since 1996. The device collects certain safety statistics—acceleration, deceleration, turns, time of day and speed—and sends them via cell signal to the insurance company. Most programs offer an insurance discount simply for installing the completely optional device, and they guarantee never to raise premiums based on data collected. Some only ask you to keep the tracker installed for one to six months; others ask for more time and for periodic check-ups. Safe drivers end up saving anywhere from 15 to 50 percent on their car insurance.

Praise and Privacy Concerns

Progressive, Allstate and State Farm have been industry leaders in piloting auto insurance trackers, and though they experienced some hiccups at first, the devices and the programs as a whole began to work very well, garnering high praise in a New York Times review.

That review addresses the privacy concerns that some insurance buyers have voiced about having their driving monitored. But none of the auto insurance trackers ever collect data about location or direction, nor do they share this information with other companies or the public. The fear that people’s “driver scores” may start to follow them around like their credit scores is, for now, unfounded.

The trackers have even taught people to be safer drivers. With Progressive’s device particularly, drivers are trained to accelerate and decelerate more smoothly thanks to the device’s beeping at rapid speed changes. It’s in the insurer’s best interest to teach its customers to be safer drivers.

How to Use this Information

For more information about auto insurance trackers, auto body repair insurance claims or any other car concern, talk to the experts at Accurate Auto Body. Call us at 303-344-2212 or contact us online.

What is preventing you from trying an auto insurance tracker?