Interesting stats from our Safeco RightTrack monitoring

For those who do not know, Safeco (and other insurance providers, too) offer a discount for allowing them to monitor your driving habits and who knows what else they do with your info... Safeco's program is called RightTrack, and they claim you can achieve up to a 30% discount with this program. I have seen one anonymous person online who claimed to have received the whole 30%. This person said he put the device in, drove the car gingerly around the block, then parked it for the remainder of the 90 day monitoring period.

Anyway, here is the interesting part - our results. The 3 things they show us are monitored is time of day (deduction for driving between midnight and 5 am, I think), hard acceleration events, and hard braking events (deductions for each one recorded). We are 75 days into the 90 day program.

Vehicle 1 - 2013 G37 IPL. Wife's daily commuter. 1058 miles, and has recorded 2 Acceleration events, and 32 Braking events. Current discount earned = 10%

Vehicle 2 - 2017 Jeep Wrangler 2 door. My daily commuter (recently traded for Tundra crewmax, but most mileage recorded with Jeep). 674 miles, 7 acceleration events, and 2 braking events. Current discount = 19%

Vehicle 3 - 2014 Toyota 4 Runner TEP. Wife drives this on rainy days, I take it when I want a change of wheels, and it's our primary vehicle for road trips/weekend excursions. 1145 miles. 25 acceleration events. 30 braking events. Current discount = 9%.

Why I said this was interesting... The G37, while no supercar, is definitely the fastest accelerating and has the most stopping power of the 3 (4) vehicles being monitored. Yet compare the results to the 4Runner.

So I guess the conclusion is the 4Runner is more difficult to drive smoothly - which this program seems to reward. Acceleration is slow to kick out of economy mode, and when it does it is more sudden than subtle. Same with brakes. They seem lazy to engage, but once you cross a threshold they become significantly more aggressive. Neither enough to feel/be unsafe, but apparently enough to be flagged as "aggressive" by the tracking device. It's something we are used to as we've had the 4R for 6 years, but I think this program has highlighted the different driving dynamics designed into the 4R when looking for the answer to "why does the 4R results appear we drive it much more aggressively than the others when we don't?"

Anyone else do this program and find similar results? We have just under 2 weeks left before pulling and mailing them back. Looks like I need to go drive the 4Runner like granny for a few days to try and bump that discount.

I like the idea of driving the vehicle around the block and parking it, I have a car I don’t drive very often so I might just do that and see if I get any sort of discount

Well, keep in mind that at least a portion of that device is to generate/preserve revenue for the insurance company. I’m not dogging that - it’s perfectly reasonable. But it’s likely calibrated very conservatively to encourage safer (meeker?) driving. No way they can account for all vehicle types when settling on the programming for the device. Plus, you probably drive each vehicle differently because of the vehicle type.

thennen said:

Well, keep in mind that at least a portion of that device is to generate/preserve revenue for the insurance company. I’m not dogging that - it’s perfectly reasonable. But it’s likely calibrated very conservatively to encourage safer (meeker?) driving. No way they can account for all vehicle types when settling on the programming for the device. Plus, you probably drive each vehicle differently because of the vehicle type.

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Fair points. I thought they may have been calibrated, as they shipped each one marked for a specific vehicle. When I traded the Jeep, I was surprised the ins. agent told me to just plug the jeep module into the Tundra (plugs into OBDII port). Seems to be working fine, recording trip times, distances and such.

As to driving the vehicles differently, that is possible. I definitely drive the Jeep/Tundra like an old man on my short, low speed 5 mile commute. BUT... if they're not calibrated per vehicle and rely only on speed/distance to gauge acceleration/deceleration rates, then why would the 4R have more fast acceleration events than the G37? I guarantee you she's getting up to 75 merging onto the toll road faster in the G37 than the 4R. They must be looking at RPM's and / or throttle position as well. I don't see any other way. Same with deceleration. Her car easily scrubs off speed much quicker than the 4R. But I guess those parameters don't necessarily have to be calibrated per vehicle. They could easily flag anything over X,000 RPM or X% throttle/brake application.

Jernik said:

Fair points. I thought they may have been calibrated, as they shipped each one marked for a specific vehicle. When I traded the Jeep, I was surprised the ins. agent told me to just plug the jeep module into the Tundra (plugs into OBDII port). Seems to be working fine, recording trip times, distances and such.

As to driving the vehicles differently, that is possible. I definitely drive the Jeep/Tundra like an old man on my short, low speed 5 mile commute. BUT... if they're not calibrated per vehicle and rely only on speed/distance to gauge acceleration/deceleration rates, then why would the 4R have more fast acceleration events than the G37? I guarantee you she's getting up to 75 merging onto the toll road faster in the G37 than the 4R. They must be looking at RPM's and / or throttle position as well. I don't see any other way. Same with deceleration. Her car easily scrubs off speed much quicker than the 4R. But I guess those parameters don't necessarily have to be calibrated per vehicle. They could easily flag anything over X,000 RPM or X% throttle/brake application.

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Yeah, there are a lot of variables. One thing I think would be interesting would be to try driving the same route, the same speeds, with different vehicles with a passenger keeping their eyes closed. I wonder if seat-of-the-pants differences would agree with the device.

That would be interesting. Actually, I think it likely would mirror the results. Our 4R doesn't have KDSS so it pitches, rolls, and dives more under cornering/acceleration/braking more than the others do.

Jernik said:

Fair points. I thought they may have been calibrated, as they shipped each one marked for a specific vehicle. When I traded the Jeep, I was surprised the ins. agent told me to just plug the jeep module into the Tundra (plugs into OBDII port). Seems to be working fine, recording trip times, distances and such.

As to driving the vehicles differently, that is possible. I definitely drive the Jeep/Tundra like an old man on my short, low speed 5 mile commute. BUT... if they're not calibrated per vehicle and rely only on speed/distance to gauge acceleration/deceleration rates, then why would the 4R have more fast acceleration events than the G37? I guarantee you she's getting up to 75 merging onto the toll road faster in the G37 than the 4R. They must be looking at RPM's and / or throttle position as well. I don't see any other way. Same with deceleration. Her car easily scrubs off speed much quicker than the 4R. But I guess those parameters don't necessarily have to be calibrated per vehicle. They could easily flag anything over X,000 RPM or X% throttle/brake application.

Click to expand...

Well if it plugs into the OBD port, it can read the throttle position. It's likely the lower power 4runner requires more throttle input to achieve the same level of acceleration as the G37. The computer just sees your wife driving with longer periods of higher throttle input, so it records that as an "acceleration event"