How It Works: Snapshot Discount, Usage-Based Insurance

 

I'd like to plug it into a car and take it to the track, lol.

 

Do the 30 day free trial

 

So I assume if you run a standalone this doesn't work. OBD port connects to nothing? Unless parallel I guess.

Be kinda fun to stick it in a track car and see if it explodes

EDIT: Does it use inertial sensors to register braking force and acceleration? Maybe plug it in, turn on the car and then with the sensor in your hand swing it around and whack it on things.

 

"The Snapshot device records vehicle speed and time information, Vehicle Identification Number, G force (in some devices), as well as when the device is connected and disconnected from the vehicle. Other information, such as miles driven and rates of acceleration and braking, is derived from the speed and time information"

 

I don't even want to know what my insurance would be if that was hooked up in my car. But having a standalone probably kills it..unless it's all GPS based with a g-meter. Just another way for the g'vmnt to track us....

 

it has its own accelerometer to measure acceleration, decceleration, and lateral G-forces. It also records mileage, what times you are driving, if you are wearing a seatbelt, what roads you are on. It records every variable that an insurance company would want to know.

 

this!!

 

I was planning on making a thread about this eventually.

Its basically an obd-II interface with a cell phone like transmitter so it can give them all that info, most notably speed and acceleration (I use acceleration as defined in physics, meaning it also account for how hard you are braking).
It would be very easy to incorporate GPS into a device like this. Im not sure if they have yet, but I suspect that they will.

Also, apparently once you get it, you cant give it back unless you want to go to another insurance company.

 

From what I have read, they do monitor braking by looking at rate-of-change in vehicle speed, and consider anything greater than 7 MPH per second to be "hard braking." So you are an unsafe driver if it takes you less than 9.3 seconds to come to a stop from 65 MPH.

I'm waiting for some savvy hacker to build a box which goes between the ECU and the snapshot device to smooth out the data.

 

Device or not, the insurance rate wont be lower than the lowest the competition offers. Its simple math. They will jack up the numbers on the initial quote and lower them to where they should be afterwards, assuming you dont drive like a maniac.

Go check it yourself. Get an initial quote with the snapshot program and then take off, maybe 30%, you will see the rate is similar to the lowest offered by competitors. At the end of the day its a numbers game and every company has minimums. One month of safe driving isnt going to prove anything to the bean counters because despite your driving habits, there are many other factors that determine your insurance premium.

It's all BS, imho.

 

A) Progressive is a private-sector company.

B) The government (aka the police) just plant GPS trackers on suspects' cars without warrants.

C) The CIA/NSA/et al doesn't fart around with this nancy boy stuff.

 

Well it should have its own G force meter so. One would have to open it up and play with it. I wonder how it would deal with a giant magnet around it.

 

This is it exactly. This will become a new trend with many insurance companies. It is a way for them to boost revenue without just raising rates across the board and making customers angry. It also makes their customers more conscious about how they drive and may lead to lower risk and therefore less payouts.

I would never put one of these devices in my vehicle unless I had no choice because I know my driving habits would label me as a high risk driver. I do not speed but I often accelerate quickly and take turns very fast. However, I also have avoided numerous accidents because I know how to react and am not a timid driver. This data cannot measure your ability to avoid an accident that is about to happen only long term accident history can measure this.

 

This has been "on the horizon" for a long time (many years), and actually available for a while now. I will fight very hard to never have one of those on my car. A blind machine like that would call me a dangerous driver and my girlfriend a safe driver; both my gf and I would agree that I am a much better/safer driver than her. I just use all three pedals to their full extent while she drives like the insurance company wants her to.

 

I should have used [sarcasm] tags lol

 

Having spent the last few days playing the "how many numbers can you make the Prius speedometer skip while braking" game, I suspect you'd be surprised at just how hard 7mph/second is.

 

I find it unlikely they added accelerometers inside the unit, its not necessary. All the information they need can be found from the OBD-II data.

You could probably just intercep and modify the VSS info coming from the OBD-II port and cut it in half. So speed and acceleration would also be understated.
The OBD-II protocols are already understood by hackers and hobbiest, so it would probably be pretty easy. You could probably even do it with an arduino AVR if you wanted.

If it doesnt have GPS Id be inclined to simulate OBD-II information on a routine that cycles through every few days. It wouldnt even have to hooked to a car, it could just sit at home and transmit false data.
But, if it does have GPS or if they add GPS, that would change things. They you would have a hard time simulating or manipulating the information because changing the VSS signal would conflict with the GPS info.

 

...about 3m/s^2 or 0.3G?

 

The solution is to get an OBD-I or older car (<1997 IIRC).