The easiest way to change a behavior is to measure it against the behavior you currently have and the behavior you want.
Case in point: do driver monitoring devices actually change the way we drive?
According to several large insurance companies — probably.
And it is possible that driver monitoring devices can result is big savings on car insurance.
Clark Howard got excited in the late 1990′s when Progressive insurance was running an experiment in Texas to track how, when and where you drove your car. Once Progressive had this data, they were able to give the customer a super-accurate insurance rate that reflected the risk of the individual driver based on driving habits.
Some of the people who listen to Clark Howard were concerned about the possibility of being monitored like this — there was concern about Big Brother watching them too closely. But Clark challenged those ideas saying that it was all voluntary, thus you couldn’t get mad if some people wanted to do it in an effort to save money on their car insurance.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that other insurers such as GMAC, Hartford and Uniguard are also offering this type of monitoring and pricing in a number of states. Progressive had been operating this model for some time — so be sure to check with your insurance carrier if they offer it.
Whatever your driving habits — if your driving habits pass the “test” of the insurance company… you could see your insurance rates go down by up to 60 percent.
As an example, one GMAC customer had been paying $2,000/year for 2 high-end luxury cars. When the system tracked the man and his wife in their daily driving routines, their insurance dropped to $866/year.
As expected, insurers have found that people tend to drive more carefully when they’re being monitored — which was not exactly what Clark Howard predicted. Clark Howard predicted that most drivers would start out safe and then soon forget. In contrary to this — it appears that people do actually change the way we drive over time.
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