jdsaengine

So Liberty Mutual said they would lower my rate anywhere from 10-30% by allowing them to place a plug in vehicle tracker in the diagnostic plug in port under the dash. For 90 days they would track mileage, speed, excessive speed or acceleration. Then I mail the plug in back to them.

I know, who wants big brother looking over my shoulder telling me how to enjoy the car.

But my question is, will this plug in possibly do some harm to the computer or electronics, infect the system. Is this plug in something I should never ever install? Anyone ever heard of this being done before? They want to do plug ins in all 4 of my cars.

robert miller

Never heard wanting to do this in all of the cars before. Do you have all 4 cars that are, are could be a track car here.

BlueDevilZ51

It wont hurt anything. I wouldnt fo it, they would cancel my policy..lol

fleming23

Mail it to me, I'm headed to Road America next week. They'll **** a brick when they pull the data

FYREANT

I also wouldnt do it even if they said there would be up to 50% off. Doesn't matter what the discount is if they cancel your policy because of your driving!!

NSC5

To me the potential discount isn't worth giving them a further opportunity to spy into my life; particularly since the data collected doesn't necessarily provide an accurate portrayal of the situation. Perhaps you accelerated suddenly to avoid an accident, braked suddenly several times because of inattentive drivers doing stupid things, and were doing what appeared to be aggressive driving because you were caught in heavy traffic that demanded frequent change from acceleration to braking. Collecting the data available through the OBD-II port doesn't provide anything close to a realistic portrayal of the driving environment; if it did making smart self-driving cars would be much simpler.

Or from another point of view if we only collected a subset of the data needed to convey the complete situation we could pretty much convict ever police officer in the country of murder; unfortunately we are getting close to this with the selective collection and release of cellphone video and eyewitness accounts.

The only thing the module may do to your car is interfere with OnStar's ability to access data for its monthly reports or a customer request to run diagnostics after a CEL.

On the other hand, if you want an insurance discount plug it in for 90 days and during that period drive like there is a raw egg permanently mounted to your accelerator and brake pedals and also pretend like any speed greater than 55 MPH scares the hell out of you.

jdsaengine

well, we are pretty tame when it comes to driving. The wife just drives the C7 around town, but might get up to 5K revs when shifting if she feels frisky

I drive a 650 BMW, but can't remember when I got it above 70 mph.

the others are Infiniti SUV and a '13 Sebring Vert that my daughter drives to college.

I think all 4 added up may be 5000 mi. per year.

We don't go any where !!!

My wife is not to happy about Big Brother watching her driving habits, and I did not want the plug in to screw up ON STAR or do some other weird things to the electronics. Plus I just never heard of insurance co. doing this. Surprised they didn't request a breath-a-lizer plug in too

NSC5

Some of the insurance companies, including my insurer State Farm, offer a voluntary program where they collect OnStar data and will use this to adjust your rates. I do keep OnStar operational in all three of my vehicles with automatic crash notification along with emergency cell usage if needed since parts of central IL might as well be deepest darkest Africa in terms of cell coverage; the higher power and external antenna of the OnStar system works much better than my iPhone in certain areas. But I don't allow data sharing with my insurer even though I am also a pretty boring on street driver except for some spirited acceleration in two lane road passing zones.

WideVette

I am in the same situation, recently switching to Safeco (a Liberty Ins Co).

I've been back and forth.

The discount is determined per car after 90 days. Never requires tracking again, in fact, future cars replaced are "grandfathered" based on the car they replace, indefinitely. It may be worth "giving up" 90 days to gain a permanent discount extending to future cars as well.

It does not register location (major lawsuit if they logged where you drive).

Records 3 parameters:

-rapid acceleration
-rapid braking
-time of day (midnight - 4 a.m. will lower your potential discount).

Key is to drive as little as possible (easy in a "fun" car). My two cars see less than a 1,000 per year combined. I was told to "drive it around the block once a week" for the 90 days.

My findings after a month (your progress is immediately uploaded with potential savings and "demerits" noted):

-easy enough to avoid rapid acceleration without holding up traffic
-I'm getting nabbed on braking.

So far I stand to save 15% (again, it's logged in real time), which is a permanent discount off for that "slot" indefinitely, and off most of the premium (not just the "collision" portion, for instance).

Do the math. Is 15-20% savings (realistic average), indefinitely, enough for 90 days of inconvenience?

IDK. For a year? Probably not. 5-10 years?? And of course where you insure can be greater savings. Insurance was double in my previous state, making 20% more tempting.

Big Brother? Is your Iphone's GPS setting turned on? Do you have traffic/red light cameras? Do you use anything other than cash? Are you on the internet (oops, of course, you are reading this). Are you hiding something?

Not sure anymore it really matters...

P.S. You can drive triple digits (Really!) it's how quickly you accelerate to speed, not the actual speed, that is tracked. Oh, and I find I can stay with or even out accelerate traffic around me without earning demerits. I'm just braking a bit too quickly.

village idiot

my thoughts exactly. Just mail it back with a blank check.

pgviper

Do it over the winter when chances are you garage the car.

davepl

If you think you're a calm enough driver to merit the discount, go for it!

I don't consider what I do in public, on full display on public roads, in a car with a unique ID plate on both ends, to be "private" anyway.

Flame Red

If you know someone that drives a old Yugo, give it to them to drive around. Oh that right, no OBD or computer on a Yugo! Or maybe just insert it when the car is parked.

Yeah, right, I trust these a$$wipes with my big data.

The ***** of these companies are just incredible. At work they want to give us a discount on our health insurance if we give them DNA samples to some 3rd party company and a variety of screening tests. My caring company wants to make sure I know all the diseases I suffer from! Of course they will not share this information with our employers - at least not yet.

And of course no hacker will ever steal this information because they value our privacy rights so greatly!

Big data seems to be a greater threat than AI's Terminator!

I believe there is one insurance company that will pay your OnStar subscription (or pay part) if you let OnStar give this data to them! Right, where do I sign up?!?!?!

Kent1999

I wouldn't be so sure about that 'permanent' discount. "Indefinitely" doesn't necessarily equal "permanent". Could just as easily mean for an "unspecified period of time".

Insurance companies *do* occasionally re-validate their data on their customers, including annual mileage checks, and running credit checks from time to time. Hard to imagine that they'll be 'permanently' happy with a 3 month spy into your everyday drive.

Either way, I wouldn't do it voluntarily. If I'm unhappy with the non-GPS-tracked rate, and the only way to get a discount is to give them all my telemetry every time I drive (even for a few months), I'll go to a different company.

My Vette Life

That's insane. Most likely it's due to all the recent claims from the hurricane's, 21st wanted to raise my rate's the excuse was do to too many recent claims they've had.

I managed to decrease my rate with them.

jdsaengine

This afternoon, the wife went to the service departments of 3 or our cars. Vette service said it could possibly cause a "check engine" light & "he would not do it" Infiniti said sure do it no problem. BMW was a very strong NO, said it could be a point of hack to the computer, plus it would draw down the batt. while it was installed and might mess with the computer if the voltage got a little low if not driven.

So, I guess with the input from these 3 and above posters, I'm telling Liberty I'll pass on their little gizmo.

And the wife gets a green light to floor it on the on ramp.

dmaxx3500

put it in drive around the block at 10-15mph,take it off and mail it back to them in a month,and say you rarely drive the car

MerakiAutoworks

I would just park my car there for a month.

30% cheaper insurance!! lol

-Josh

Avanti

Of course they do... JUST SAY NO! (for State Farm the "discount" is so trivial as to be insulting)

Btw, even an older lady friend who works as State Farm won't use it.

HoldHard

It does not provide accurate information. We did it and the version from Progressive would set off tones when it recorded something that was going to be reported.

There is one driveway at my son's work that is taken after a sharp right turn. It bounced the car pretty good as it has a high curb portion to route water to the nearby drain. No matter what speed he took the turn, the monitor would always chirp. When he tried to explain that to the insurance company, their reply was "the device is always right".

That one was mailed back before the 90 days. The other three remained in the cars and none of the cars got any discount. When I called them on it, they responded that my son could be driving any of the four cars so there is no discount, he has to be on the policy for all the vehicles. Screw that! My son doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission and that's what's in the VETTE!!!

Currently looking for another insurance carrier that will cover just the Corvette and not take the whole family into consideration as I'm the only one that can drive a stick....

HH