"Hard braking event, Belt Highway, 4:42 p.m." Garrett held his phone out across the supper table like it was evidence in a trial. "That was a guy turning left from the wrong lane. I didn't do anything. I stopped." Lainey said she believed the app. Tina asked everyone to put their phones down. This was week two.
The day after Garrett got his license in late January, he installed our insurer's driving-score app on his phone. Our agent had suggested it when we talked about the $1,140 jump in our premium. The app runs in the background, uses the phone's sensors and GPS, and scores each trip on braking, acceleration, speed, phone use and time of day. After 90 days, the score can earn a discount at renewal. Our renewal was May 1, so the timing worked: early February to early May.
I want to be clear about how ours worked, because these programs vary by insurer and by state. On our policy, our agent told us the app could earn a discount but would not raise our rate. Some programs can. Ask before you sign up.
What it flagged
At the end of the 90 days, Garrett's report showed about 2,600 miles of driving: school, a few trips to Hy-Vee, Sunday drives with Lainey, his friend's house across town. The app's summary was mostly good.
- Speed: no flagged trips. He drives like his grandfather.
- Time of day: almost nothing late at night, which the state's 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. rule and our curfew pretty much guarantee.
- Hard braking: flagged repeatedly, about a dozen events in the first three weeks, then only a few after that.
- Phone use: two pick-ups while the car was moving.
The hard braking surprised me at first. Then I rode with him and figured it out. He was following too close, especially in town, so when the car ahead slowed, he had to brake harder than he should have. It's the same thing that cost him on his first permit test: following distance. We talked about it, and the flagged events dropped almost immediately. I'll take that.
The argument
The two phone pick-ups are the reason this post has the word "argument" in it.
House rule since he got his license: the phone goes in the center console while the car is moving. The app said it had come out twice. Garrett's position was that both times he was stopped at a red light on the Belt Highway, changing the music, and that the app counted it because the car crept forward. My position was that the house rule doesn't mention red lights. Tina's position was that she wanted to eat supper.
We settled it like this. The playlist gets picked before the car is in gear. The phone goes into the console with Do Not Disturb on. If he really needs to change something, he pulls into a parking lot. He agreed, a little grumpily. I think he was more embarrassed that the app caught it than worried about the rule. Fine by me. Whatever works.
What the discount came to
Our May 1 renewal came in at a base of $2,148 for six months, up from the $2,010 we'd been paying since we dropped collision on the van. Our agent said the increase was a general rate change, not anything we did. I asked specifically about the deer claim on the Silverado in November. Our agent said comprehensive claims for hitting an animal typically aren't treated as at-fault, and it didn't factor into our renewal.
The driving-score discount took $131 off. Our new six-month premium is $2,017, about $336 a month.
$131 every six months, about $22 a month, isn't going to change our life. But it's $262 a year for doing things we wanted Garrett to do anyway: leave space, keep the phone away, slow down. The money is nice. The coaching was worth more. I could tell him all day to leave more room, but when a phone app beeps at him about it, he listens.
Our agent said the discount carries forward as long as he stays enrolled and keeps a decent score. The app stays on his phone. He knows that every hard stop and every phone pick-up is getting written down somewhere.
So, in a sense, now he has his own spiral notebook. He doesn't think that's as funny as I do.