123 Go Drive App for reduced insurance renewal

DMcL1971

I got an E-Mail last week from 123.ie inviting me to download their new app called 123 Go Drive. This app uses the GPS information from your smartphone in order to monitor your driving. It then gives you a score for each journey you take.

If the app logs 300Km or more of my driving before the end of December, I will get a 5% reduction on my insurance renewal. If my overall score is better than 77% for that period I will get a 10% reduction on my renewal.

Has anyone else tried using this and app and if so how are you getting on?

It is annoying the hell out of me. For starters it doesn't recognise every journey that I take. So far I reckon it has actually logged about half the journeys.

But what is really frustrating me is the 'Smooth Driving' category. No matter how slowly I accelerate and how smoothly I brake I cannot get a decent score in this category. I can maintain full marks in all other categories but struggle to even get half marks in 'Smooth Driving'.

Atomic Pineapple

Personally I think these apps are a joke, the sensors on the device won't be accurate enough to give readings that are valid enough for the type of actions they are monitoring add in what is likely to be poor coding and that's probably why you are seeing the poor readings.

On top of this the app will drain your battery as it constantly uses the sensors. For me this just isn't the correct way to monitor a persons driving.

ironclaw

Speaking as a developer, the Accelerometer and GPS in the average smartphone is just not up to the task of this. It's fine for games etc but not for monitoring driving. It doesn't take into account the orientation of the phone, how its mounted etc etc. Would be fairly easy to cheat if you placed it in a gyroscope In the code itself, you would want to be fairly savvy with your filters and smoothing to ensure you are getting sensible readings, and I very much doubt they are doing this. By comparison, the trackers we use take about a week to get the calibration just right, and we have to configure a shedload of parameters. The result however is spot on in comparison to a phone.

Personally I don't like the idea of being monitored while I drive. Way too much data for insurance companies to use and its not going to be positive for anyone. 5% of my premium is less than €50, I'd spend that if I had a heavy right foot week on petrol. It's not enough for me to part with that data.

Alanstrainor

Ugh, give it 2 years and almost all insurance companies will have these apps. No way am I installing one if I can help it.

Cortina_MK_IV

After 30 years of accident-free driving and still getting quotes in excess of €900 per year from these twats, they can stick their app up their rusty bullet hole.

jimgoose

I find the idea of such a device deeply offensive indeed.

wardides

Been using the drivesafe from AXA the past year. It's an absolute lifesaver for any first time drivers. For me it had nothing to do with getting money back, and more to do with the original cost. Got my first car last year, and being 23, the cheapest place I got quoted for insurance was about 1,900 quid. Axa quoted me 1,100 if I used the app. Like the above, if I get over 70% then my 5% of my premium gets given back to me. Checked every quarter so potential to get a hundred or so quid back which is handy.

It has absolutely very little impact on your battery as well, so no idea why someone said that above. Not that I've noticed anyway, not much more than any other app would. Don't even feel myself using it these days, it's more so a habit now when I get into the car.

Not sure I'd take it if I was just offered it in order to be able to get some of my premium back however, as I said, it was more about the relative cost of the policy compared to elsewhere.

TeaBagMania

ironclaw wrote: »

Would be fairly easy to cheat if you placed it in a gyroscope

I like the way you think

buddy of mine has this setup in his work truck only it attaches to the ODB2 port, looks like these devices might become the future norm

DMcL1971

My experience with it so far would suggest that it is a long way from actually providing an accurate assessment of your driving. Though I would imagine that as more data gets collected it could start to produce meaningful results in the future. But a hell of a lot more development would be needed.

But for now it is certainly not a fair reflection of the real world. For example the smooth driving category seems to measure how much accelerating and decelerating you are doing. They interpret this as meaning that you are tailgating and constantly having to hit the brakes. Therefore lots of changes are a bad thing. However driving in heavy rush hour traffic involves constantly speeding up and slowing down. I drove from one junction on the M50 to another today in heavy traffic and I got a score of 2 out of 10 because I was in traffic. When what I was doing was perfectly safe normal driving.

It is having a significant drain on my battery.

Atomic Pineapple

wardides wrote: »

It has absolutely very little impact on your battery as well, so no idea why someone said that above. Not that I've noticed anyway, not much more than any other app would.

Less noticeable if you have it on iOS but it will be draining your battery. (Although the app may be better developed than most if its not noticeable)

The idea itself is sound but the execution is incorrect, they should be investing in devices made specifically for this type of monitoring and having them professionally fitted to cars before they are allowed to use the data.

DMcL1971

I don't think the problem lies with the collection of the data it is more how the data is interpreted. It is all well and good knowing where I was at any given time and how fast I was driving but, does the software know what the actual speed limit was at my location? Take, for example, the speed limit on the N11 varies wildly up and down as you travel along it. Does it take in to account the weather conditions, the time of day, the traffic volume etc.

Accelerating hard is necessary in order to safely merge from a minor slip road on to a fast moving motorway. Braking hard is often necessary when exiting a motorway. Driving along a road with speed bumps involves constantly speeding up and slowing down. If the analysis program doesn't know about the speed bumps it would think you were driving like a nutcase.

Notch000

I would never use one of these devices, I don't see it from being much difference to electro tagging a criminal under house arrest. good for some one looking for a voluntary reduction due to monitoring, but bad news for everyone else !

wardides

DMcL1971 wrote: »

Accelerating hard is necessary in order to safely merge from a minor slip road on to a fast moving motorway. Braking hard is often necessary when exiting a motorway. Driving along a road with speed bumps involves constantly speeding up and slowing down. If the analysis program doesn't know about the speed bumps it would think you were driving like a nutcase.

I definitely agree in terms of it not being completely accurate. But it has never scored me overly bad I don't think. However the bit I've quoted is not entirely through to be fair. Why would you constantly speed up and slow down in a road with speed bumps? Why not just travel at a speed comfortable enough to get over all the bumps? And why you need to brake hard when exiting a motorway? You know your exit and should be prepared to come off. In regards to breaking harsh on the M50, I do agree, but then again most who do are people who call the outside lane the "fast lane". It's not.

jimgoose

DMcL1971 wrote: »

...Accelerating hard is necessary in order to safely merge from a minor slip road on to a fast moving motorway...

Correct. There are many HQDNs - the South Ring in Cork being one - that are not officially motorways for this reason, among others. Some of the slip-roads are way too short, and many cars are not able to reach a safe merging speed on them.

wardides

jimgoose wrote: »

Correct. There are many HQDNs - the South Ring in Cork being one - that are not officially motorways for this reason, among others. Some of the slip-roads are way too short, and many cars are not able to reach a safe merging speed on them.

Another factor is cars currently travelling on the motorway who feel it necessary to speed up when they see car coming from a slip road!

jimgoose

wardides wrote: »

Another factor is cars currently travelling on the motorway who feel it necessary to speed up when they see car coming from a slip road!

As opposed to one of moving out, or adjusting speed to keep the merger where you can see him. Yeah, I know. <sigh>... :pac:

RedorDead

Their app is woegus. Installed it for a the craic for a couple of weeks as the mrs was also using it just to see if i could beat her. Without trying i got in the 90s on my third go. Then other times despite my most nunlike acceleration and braking it scored me down for 'smooth driving'.

Ive come to the conclusion that this app encourages unsafe tortoise like driving and i hated myself as a driver for the week i had it. It leads to frustrated drivers behind you and unsafe situations where you cannot accelerate to merge on roads and motorways.

Still scored 80% for the two weeks mind you. But i hated every minute of it.

DMcL1971

wardides wrote: »

I definitely agree in terms of it not being completely accurate. But it has never scored me overly bad I don't think. However the bit I've quoted is not entirely through to be fair. Why would you constantly speed up and slow down in a road with speed bumps? Why not just travel at a speed comfortable enough to get over all the bumps? And why you need to brake hard when exiting a motorway? You know your exit and should be prepared to come off. In regards to breaking harsh on the M50, I do agree, but then again most who do are people who call the outside lane the "fast lane". It's not.

In relation to speed bumps it depends on the bump height, the number of bumps and the speed limit of the road. There are a couple of roads I can think of where the speed limit is 40kmh but you need to slow down to around 10 to get over each of the many bumps. You can't drive at 10 (quarter of the posted speed limit) for the whole length of the road.

There are many motorway exits where the exit ramp is quite short and the speed limit is low on the adjoining road. So you are on the motorway travelling at 100-120 in the flow of traffic, you know your exit is coming up and you will need to get down to 40 or 50 once you are off. You cannot slow down too much on the motorway because it would be unsafe so you have to do all your braking on the short off ramp.

My point is that there are many instances where what this app seems to think is safe driving is actually not. Until the app can take these things into account it isn't really doing its job properly.

GARAGE.IE

Speaking purely as a driver, I'd be SERIOUSLY reluctant to agive any insurance company this kind of information. I can recall back in the 90's, finding out that motor insurance companies have huge power in this country due to the compulsory nature of road insurance, and I can remember being unable to get any insurance cover at all in my 20's, and the basis for this was absolutely nothing other than my age. I eventually managed to get insurance which was hugely overpriced and went on to have 20 years of safe and event free driving since then.

Giving insurance companies any basis whatsoever for increasing what they perceive to be the level of risk that you might represent, I think is nothing less than seriously unwise. We have 2 authorities in this country whose job it is to assess and manage driving behaviour:

(1) The driver testing system which evaluates your ability to drive safely and issues you a permit if you demonstrate a capability to drive in a safe and proficient manner.

(2) Gardai, who are tasked with the job of enforcing the provisions of the Road Traffic Act(s).

Insurance companies have no mandate whatsoever to enforce road traffic legislation in this jurisdiction, and where the systems they are using are questionable at best in terms of their design and functionality, and the purpose that the data is then being used for is anything but clear, not on my life would I give an insurance company access to any of this information.

Who is to say that if the app tells them that you are regularly driving at a particular time after midnight during the weekend, that they are not categorising you on that basis as a drink driver or as someone who through no fault of your own, is at a higher risk of a crash because you may be driving at a time when other drunk drivers are more likely to be on the road?

Who is to say that in the event of a claim, that the first thing your insurance company may do is pull up the data coming from your app and suddenly this data, which could be unreliable, becomes the basis for you being held to have caused an accident and your no claims bonus goes out the window and your policy goes up to an insane price, meanwhile no other insurance company will touch you?!?

If the other driver doesn't have real time data streaming to his/her insurance company via their smartphone, in theory you could be held to have caused an accident even though there is absolutely no telemetry data available in relation to the other driver? If the data itself is unreliable, or at least has not been properly verified and tested by an independent third party that can be trusted, that is completely separate from the insurance company using the data, and if it is not possible to verify exactly what the data is being used for, (and let us not forget that these are Irish insurance companies we are talking about here!!!), who is to say what unsavory situation you could end up being placed in by your insurance company here, at no fault of your own?

There are also serious data privacy concerns here, if you sign up to an app like this, your insurance company basically have a real time tracking device on you. Who is that information being shared with? We have recently seen how government intelligence agencies in the US and also in the UK have been deeply tied into the data systems of multinational corporations.

I would just ask anyone who may be thinking of being bribed into using an app like this by an insurance company to take a big step back and ask themselves why insurance companies are now trying to make it appear like normal business, to have real time tracking devices on its customers? Why do they now want what is a HUGE amount of real time private telemetry data, on it's customers? Who is overseeing how and when this data is being used? I can recall a few years that there was certainly no state watchdog telling insurance companies in this jurisdiction that they had to quote tens of thousands of Irish motorists in their 20's for cover, these companies could and were giving the two fingers to tens of thousands of safe young drivers for many years by refusing to even give them a quote and were a law onto themselves and appear to still be a law onto themselves due to a lack of effective regulation in this whole area, despite there being a financial regulator governing the insurance sector and an insurance ombudsman who deals specifically with complaints concerning insurance.

ironclaw

@GARAGE.IE, good points but FYI if you own a Apple or Android device, you're data is being shared already to map traffic patterns etc. Its how Google Maps gets its info.

GARAGE.IE

ironclaw wrote: »

@GARAGE.IE, good points but FYI if you own a Apple or Android device, you're data is being shared already to map traffic patterns etc. Its how Google Maps gets its info.

I hear ya, if you have a smartphone these days you are essentially being tracked in real time. The thing is though, Apple or Google might have data on your movements but Apple or Google aren't insuring your driving and can't put a financial gun to your head by ramping up your policy very significantly, in the event they they might take a look at the data coming from your app in the event of an incident, and form a view that you were the cause of a crash. Having seen how insurance companies have conducted themselves in this country in recent years, (we have a 2% levy on all non life insurance products in this country to clean up the mess from Quinn Direct), I wouldn't trust them an inch with the usage of this information.

Alanstrainor

ironclaw wrote: »

@GARAGE.IE, good points but FYI if you own a Apple or Android device, you're data is being shared already to map traffic patterns etc. Its how Google Maps gets its info.

If you just turn location off, it will disable this.

wonski

This is a trial. At the end of the month app should be uninstalled and all data will become anonymous.

Those who take part in the trial will receive discount even if they score 20 (5%).

No need to be paranoid about it as it is voluntary.

You can mark journey as passenger, too and it won't count towards your overall score.

kirving

I developed a telemetry system for a racecar for my final year project.

It comprised of over 15k of equipment(steering sensors, wheel speed, GPS, accelerometers, etc, all high spec), a year of development, and tested in a known environment. the sensors were places in optimum positions, the signals filtered correctly, outliers caused by a bump in the road were known etc.

Even still, it was nigh on impossible to determine whether the driver was good or bad without backup video. If the phone is placed on cheap windscreen mount, it could vibrate and cause high acceleration readings, as can a pothole, or merging on a motorway. The app cannot and does not account for these real life variables as they are unknown.

Formula 1 teams spend millions of euro, per car, and thousands of man hours to develop and test telemetry systems. OEMs often don't even develop their own stability control systems as its too specialist, they leave it to Bosch or Continental who have the specialist knowledge to understand how a car is behaving based on sensor input alone.

Only now are top end car manufacturers offering systems that can suggest to a driver to take a rest break based on how they're driving. Heavy and late braking, lean departure warning cameras being activated, inconsistent speed, etc. A lot of data is needed to correctly analyse a drivers behavior.

I cant fathom how 123.ie or whoever they are think that they can monitor your driving with a phone that could be mounted in any of 1000 orientations, that has a slow update GPS, and an accelerometer that is just about good enough for games.

Then, just wait until a drunk cyclist, wearing all black with no lights, wobbles out in front of you while the app says you're doing 31kp in a 30 zone.

dr.fuzzenstein

DMcL1971 wrote: »

I got an E-Mail last week from 123.ie inviting me to download their new app called 123 Go Drive. This app uses the GPS information from your smartphone in order to monitor your driving. It then gives you a score for each journey you take.

If the app logs 300Km or more of my driving before the end of December, I will get a 5% reduction on my insurance renewal. If my overall score is better than 77% for that period I will get a 10% reduction on my renewal.

Has anyone else tried using this and app and if so how are you getting on?

It is annoying the hell out of me. For starters it doesn't recognise every journey that I take. So far I reckon it has actually logged about half the journeys.

But what is really frustrating me is the 'Smooth Driving' category. No matter how slowly I accelerate and how smoothly I brake I cannot get a decent score in this category. I can maintain full marks in all other categories but struggle to even get half marks in 'Smooth Driving'.

The smooth driving category will be the one used to up your premium.
The strategy is, have voluntary trials, hoik gullible people and desperate young drivers in with discounts (on sham €3k quotes), go to the government and show them your doctored data (and slip them a few envelopes), so eventually it will hopefully become compulsory to have the software or a spy box installed.
So when everyone has it, begin hiking premiums, pointing at every possible transgression like 1 km/h over the speedlimit or maybe up their risk factor for too much nighttime driving and if there is nothing, but absolutely nothing (driver an 80 year old Granny in a Micra), use the bogus "smooth driving" data, which means exactly bubkes, it's just a catch-all excuse where you can hit people with random increases (on top of annual premium increases) for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
It's nothing but a big stick for the insurance companies to beat drivers over the head with and I will do my damnedest not to voluntarily hand those bastards that stick. And if I ever have an app/black box forced on me, there will be a series of unfortunate, unexplainable and unfixable technical "issues" that will prevent that sh*t from ever working.

GARAGE.IE

How people do not have major privacy concerns about this kind of stuff, really amazes me. It starts off with, "this is just a little trial" or "we'll give you a 5% discount on a really high premium if you run with this for us", within a few years every metre you previously have been driving has been recorded and a set of arguments will inevitably be built around the device and the information coming from the device, to increase your cost of insurance.

I had a similar conversation with someone recently in relation to having to register your car with a parking company in a private estate. There was an expectation that I had to get on my phone and tell some third party business, where I am and for how long I intend to stay there. This kind of subtle yet serious invasion of privacy has just crept into all our lives in recent years. Some might read what I'm saying here and say I'm being paranoid or whatever, I just completely disagree with the mission creep in recent years where in relation to what used to be just ordinary day to day living, you are now expected to be recorded or filmed or to have to submit yourself to being electronically monitored in relation to daily stuff that you do. In the case of smartphone technology, we consent to it, but in the case of motor insurance, I won't be having any of it, not after 20 years of seeing how motor insurance companies in this jurisdiction conduct themselves.

Seweryn

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

And if I ever have an app/black box forced on me, there will be a series of unfortunate, unexplainable and unfixable technical "issues" that will prevent that sh*t from ever working.

Eh... Get yourself a proper phone and you will never have to worry about the technical issues...

michellie

I did it last year. Got the full discount in my renewal in July. No complaints except it wore down my phone battery .

dr.fuzzenstein

Seweryn wrote: »

Eh... Get yourself a proper phone and you will never have to worry about the technical issues...

The Matrix has you.

Seweryn

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

The Matrix has you.

This is not the Matrix phone, but almost everyone calls it that way .

wardides

GARAGE.IE wrote: »

How people do not have major privacy concerns about this kind of stuff, really amazes me. It starts off with, "this is just a little trial" or "we'll give you a 5% discount on a really high premium if you run with this for us", within a few years every metre you previously have been driving has been recorded and a set of arguments will inevitably be built around the device and the information coming from the device, to increase your cost of insurance.

I had a similar conversation with someone recently in relation to having to register your car with a parking company in a private estate. There was an expectation that I had to get on my phone and tell some third party business, where I am and for how long I intend to stay there. This kind of subtle yet serious invasion of privacy has just crept into all our lives in recent years. Some might read what I'm saying here and say I'm being paranoid or whatever, I just completely disagree with the mission creep in recent years where in relation to what used to be just ordinary day to day living, you are now expected to be recorded or filmed or to have to submit yourself to being electronically monitored in relation to daily stuff that you do. In the case of smartphone technology, we consent to it, but in the case of motor insurance, I won't be having any of it, not after 20 years of seeing how motor insurance companies in this jurisdiction conduct themselves.

Whilst I agree there is a fair bit of data handover it's nothing more than any other device in your life. Have you a tesco clubcard? You'd be amazed at the privacy details stored on that & similar with most retail loyalty schemes & apps.

jimgoose

wardides wrote: »

...Have you a tesco clubcard?....

No. They can fcuk off and do their own morkesh research.

iano.p

I got the email today. I wouldn't be bothered downloading the app. The 10% off means feck all really you could get more just shopping around. Call me paranoid but I feel in the long run the data will be used to hike your insurance

morritty

I had one of these before with NoNonsence, a little box plugged into the OBDII port, told me if i got over a certain score i'd get 40% off the next year, needless to say i was actually within the score by a point and my insurance went up 20 quid..... they asked me to do it the next year. not a hope in hell.

dr.fuzzenstein

wardides wrote: »

Whilst I agree there is a fair bit of data handover it's nothing more than any other device in your life. Have you a tesco clubcard? You'd be amazed at the privacy details stored on that & similar with most retail loyalty schemes & apps.

Tesco doesn't say "oh, I don't like how you braked sharply in aisle 5, those g forces for cornering are a bit hairy and you wanna do something about that lead foot of yours, we'll shlap a 20% surcharge on your shopping now"

wardides

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Tesco doesn't say "oh, I don't like how you braked sharply in aisle 5, those g forces for cornering are a bit hairy and you wanna do something about that lead foot of yours, we'll shlap a 20% surcharge on your shopping now"

Either does my Axa app?

GARAGE.IE

wardides wrote: »

Whilst I agree there is a fair bit of data handover it's nothing more than any other device in your life. Have you a tesco clubcard? You'd be amazed at the privacy details stored on that & similar with most retail loyalty schemes & apps.

Yeah but using the same analogy, if you decide that you no longer want to shop in Tesco, you can go to Supervalu or ALDI without any hesitation you are free to shop around and Tesco doesn't have any particular hold over you as a customer. Motor insurance companies differ in the sense that if your insurer deems you to have been the cause of a traffic accident, or even just a party to an accident, then you are basically seriously screwed with regard to your ability to continue driving while paying the same premium, while an incident may be getting worked through at the insurance end of things. If there are medical damages and legal action, you could be looking at 2-5 years where no other insurance company will touch you and you are at the complete mercy of your own insurance company. It isn't really comparable to Tesco using a loyalty card to track what kind of a palette you might be inclined to have and what your taste in food might be like and whether you prefer Pepsi or Coke.

The point I'm making is that it doesn't take much imagination to see how the data gathered by these apps that insurance companies are bribing people to use, could easily be used to attach blame to a client in the event of the insurer being advised of a claim.

Also, it is a given that if an insurance company sees you driving at 1AM on a Saturday night, they will categorise you as a higher risk. You can argue that you are not drink driving so therefore how are you a higher risk, you know what they will come back with, that because other road users may be drink/drug driving at those hours, therefore you being on the same road as them, represents a higher risk. We've already seen insurance companies offer discounts for young drivers to stay off the road at certain hours over the weekend, so there would be nothing unusual about them categorising people who are driving at those hours, as per the data coming from their app.

jimgoose

morritty wrote: »

I had one of these before with NoNonsence, a little box plugged into the OBDII port, told me if i got over a certain score i'd get 40% off the next year, needless to say i was actually within the score by a point and my insurance went up 20 quid..... they asked me to do it the next year. not a hope in hell.

I have a little OBD-II pluggy-in thing as well. Do you think AXA would give me a discount if I sent them a few months worth of short- and long-term fuel-trims and throttle vacuum??

Alanstrainor

Are the ones that plug into the OBDII port equipped with GSM sim cards or similar to send back the information? Or does it require you to send back the plug to them to upload?

Skylinehead

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Are the ones that plug into the OBDII port equipped with GSM sim cards or similar to send back the information? Or does it require you to send back the plug to them to upload?

Could be a Bluetooth one that connects to a phone app.

morritty

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Are the ones that plug into the OBDII port equipped with GSM sim cards or similar to send back the information? Or does it require you to send back the plug to them to upload?

Mine wasn't bluetooth, nor did i have to upload any data so i assume it was GSM

H3llR4iser

Besides the technical fallacies of monitoring driving with cheap devices such as a smartphone or an ODBII plugin-box (as a couple of fellow developers pointed out already - collecting accurate data from a vehicle needs complex and expensive equipment, without even beginning to mention the software), what I am very surprised about is that nobody raises the biggest, most relevant question of them all: the one about the "parameters" recorded and evaluated being completely arbitrary.

Long story short: the only things that can be evaluated objectively are distance driven, time, location and speed limits. Considering the limitations of GPS, one could very well drive in the wrong direction on the motorway and the box would not record it; not to mention traffic lights, stop signs and the likes. Essentially a driver could be violating every single rule of the road except for the speed limits and score as "completely safe" with these boxes.

More importantly, who and how exactly decides what is "excessive acceleration" or "abrupt braking"? Also, who can guarantee that the companies won't just revise the parameters arbitrarily - say they lay down a baseline, realize most drivers score very high and redefine all values to make them fall into a more "dangerous" category, in the same guise they do with aging cars, for example?

Think VERY hard before endorsing the "blackbox" idea...

GARAGE.IE

H3llR4iser wrote: »

Besides the technical fallacies of monitoring driving with cheap devices such as a smartphone or an ODBII plugin-box (as a couple of fellow developers pointed out already - collecting accurate data from a vehicle needs complex and expensive equipment, without even beginning to mention the software), what I am very surprised about is that nobody raises the biggest, most relevant question of them all: the one about the "parameters" recorded and evaluated being completely arbitrary.

Long story short: the only things that can be evaluated objectively are distance driven, time, location and speed limits. Considering the limitations of GPS, one could very well drive in the wrong direction on the motorway and the box would not record it; not to mention traffic lights, stop signs and the likes. Essentially a driver could be violating every single rule of the road except for the speed limits and score as "completely safe" with these boxes.

More importantly, who and how exactly decides what is "excessive acceleration" or "abrupt braking"? Also, who can guarantee that the companies won't just revise the parameters arbitrarily - say they lay down a baseline, realize most drivers score very high and redefine all values to make them fall into a more "dangerous" category, in the same guise they do with aging cars, for example?

Think VERY hard before endorsing the "blackbox" idea...

Yeah but some very simple techniques could be used by your insurance company to arrive at some key assumptions about your driving. Say for example, if you are taking a journey from Point A (lets just say for example a suburb of Dublin), to point B (Galway City). Say you tell the app when you start and finish your journey via a start-stop button on the app.


Your insurance company can very easily deduce that if you did that journey in under a specified time that they have worked out is the specified time that the journey can be done by respecting all speed limits ABSOLUTELY PERFECTLY, that then you exceeded speed limits somewhere in the journey and therefore represent a higher premium risk. They don't need to look into where the breach of the speed limit was, the shortening of the journey time on your part might be tiny, on a good day and on an empty motorway you might be doing 76KPH instead of 67KPH, you aren't going to kill anyone and you are not driving recklessly or dangerously, but when your journey time is compared to the "model" journey time that the app is evaluating you against, you fail to pass the criteria that the insurance company has defined as "safe" at the end of the day. This is just one example I can think of, I'm sure there are more, of how this device can be used against you, and in the example above, there is transparency seriously lacking with regard to what is going on.

DMcL1971

Garage.ie throughout this thread you have made a lot of valid points and you have me convinced. I have just uninstalled the app. They can keep their discount. In fact, come renewal time I will be doing my best to find a different insurance company. The experience has soured me on 123. I've been with them for 5 years but I will be moving on now.

P.S. I will be writing an E-Mail to their app feedback line to tell them exactly why.

eringobragh

morritty wrote: »

Mine wasn't bluetooth, nor did i have to upload any data so i assume it was GSM

Heres one from the states, not a cat in hells chance I'd use either of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcIEnJPVATM

Siobh73

Just installed this app yesterday and have used it for 3 journeys so far. I deliberately chose longer journeys with little risk of traffic to allow smooth driving and have no issue with that parameter. However, the first 2 journeys gave me an amber rating for speed although I felt I was careful with speed limits - even staying below them most of the time.

So this morning, I deliberately stayed well below all speed limits, much to the annoyance of drivers behind me! I completed a 26.5km journey in 33 minutes - an average speed of 48.18 km per hour. At no times did I drive in an area with a limit of less than 50km per hour - yet, I still have an amber rating for speed!! I think I will give it one more go on my next motorway journey but otherwise, I felt I was more of a risk on the roads this morning by holding up other drivers and constantly looking out for speed signs!

DMcL1971

I'm glad to hear that i'm not the only one. I did find the same with the speed issue myself. I always drive under the speed limit and use the 'Speed Warning' function and the 'Cruise Control' in the car to make sure of this but it would still complain that I was speeding. I suspect that the app has no idea what the actual posted speed limit is on the particular road that you are on.

My biggest issue was with the smooth driving but all my journeys were short local journeys so that app seems to see my stopping and starting in traffic and thinks there is something wrong.

If the app is unaware of exact speed limits it could also contribute to the smooth driving issue. For instance I regularly drive on the N11 from Dublin to Wicklow. If the app decides I should be doing 100 because it is a national road then it is going to wonder why my speed keeps varying as I go through all the various different sections of the N11 where the posted speed limit varies between 50 and 100.

I certainly agree with you in relation to the danger of using this app. I found that I was so concerned with trying to please the app that I was doing some of the most dangerous driving I have ever done. I spent all my time crawling along holding up traffic, accelerating away from lights at walking speed, slowing down hundreds of metres before junctions and spending more time looking at the speedometer than at the road.

Mycroft H

What happens if your car isn't OBD-II Compliant?

morritty

The NoNonsence one allowed you to hook it up directly to the battery. Now, how it pulled data? that i havent a clue.

DMcL1971

123.ie are using 123Go which is an app installed on your phone. So technically they are measuring your phones movement not your cars.

ironclaw

morritty wrote: »

The NoNonsence one allowed you to hook it up directly to the battery. Now, how it pulled data? that i havent a clue.

It can't. Unless its on the OBD Port then its not using your cars telemetry, its using its own GPS and gyro's, which will be rough to say the least.

DMcL1971 wrote: »

123.ie are using 123Go which is an app installed on your phone. So technically they are measuring your phones movement not your cars.

Which is a huge problem as phones are just not accurate enough for this application. They are not calibrated so even between phones, you will have a slight variance. Tracking, fine, but actual measurements for meaningful insurance data? No. If you built good filters and real world testing, a smidge better at best. But that takes time and money which they are not going to spend and even if they did, makes no difference. I'm saying all that as someone with a technical and programming background in the in's and out's of such devices.

All these Apps's are is a way for an insurance company to gather massive data about a User and give them a useful cop out to load someone. I can't understand why anyone would install one.