I currently have Safeco Insurance and was eager to reduce my annual insurance premium. I pretty much had every discount you could think of but my son was just recently licensed and my insurance premium pretty much doubled. The only discount left was the RightTrack discount.
The way it works is that you need to participate in the program for 90 days which requires you to have a module installed in each vehicle that you choose to be part of the program. Many people think that the companies monitor everything, but they only are concerned with hard braking, rapid acceleration, and time of driving. At this point I didn’t care what they were monitoring since just signing up would save me a minimum of 5%. I didn’t think twice and immediately requested the module for all four vehicles.
Several weeks went by and I didn’t hear anything; hmmm, disappointing. However, once my renewal date hit, I received four emails from Safeco (one per auto) stating that my modules had been mailed and I should install them in my cars as soon as I received them. Several days went by and four boxes arrived from Safeco. Each module was assigned to a specific vehicle and came with a pamphlet describing how to install and what was to be monitored. The company monitors rapid acceleration, hard braking as well as time of driving. Although the module is constantly monitoring while driving, they track and I believe penalize for the hours between 12am to 4am (good news for me since I’m snoozing by 9!) It takes me no longer than 60 seconds to install each module and we’re off!
Well, the first month was quite interesting. I was literally obsessed with going onto my account to check how many hard brake and rapid accelerations each car had. We would sit at dinner and talk about our results. It’s crazy how we would each remember the exact details of where and why each incident happened! I find it fascinating how aware we were, knowing we were being monitored.
Month two and three were completely different. Our family had pretty much forgotten about the modules being installed and went about our daily routines without even thinking about them for weeks. Safeco would email me when each month was up which would remind me to take a peek at our current results.
Well I’m happy to report that I just finished the program and have saved a total of 13% on one car, and 7% on the additional three cars! Safeco mailed me four pre-paid envelopes to mail back each module. Although some people feel like the driving habit discount is an invasion of privacy and refuse to participate, I feel different. The majority of us go to work, school, the gym, shopping, etc. Since the majority of us use our cars to do the exact same thing, I’m not sure why more people don’t want to participate and save money. The added bonus is that you can also monitor your kids driving habits, which makes great dinner conversation. It’s a win-win in my eyes 🙂
