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Ford wants to become into the business organisation of helping drivers rate their skills. An onboard plug-in module plus a smartphone apps gives you a "personal driving score." Ford likens its Commuter Behavior Project, function of Ford'southward bigger Smart Mobility push, to a fitness app that tracks how many calories yous burn or how long y'all've exercised. Right now it'south a trial programme in London, simply information technology could expand. Ford says it provides feedback that helps drivers self-ameliorate and a ratings score score that enables them to qualify for cheaper automobile rentals or lower insurance rates.

That assumes Ford's drivers are skillful drivers, or the app convinces them to mend their wicked ways on the highway. Otherwise, their insurance and rental rates won't become down. The mode it works now with insurance company tracking modules is that there is a chance to reduce rates with good driving behavior, only besides the possibility of higher rates if you have a then-so rating. Drivers have some concerns that in the futurity insurers might push button for college rates for those who opt not to have driver tracking. Big Brother and all.

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How the Commuter Behavior Project works

Ford, working with the University of Nottingham, recruited 43 Ford Fiesta drivers in the London area. A plug-in device captured their driving habits such as acceleration, braking, pedal pressure, steering wheel angle, and steering micro-movements, likewise as fourth dimension of day and location. In addition, the subjects were tested within a simulator, where a 360-caste landscape was projected onto a half-dome; similar an shipping simulator, this one could vibrate, tip, or tilt to emulate the auto's reaction to steering and braking. There are both normal and stressful driving situations. Sensors record driver eye motion, heart rate, and brain waves.

The project covered 160,000 km (100,000 miles) and 4,000 hours of driving. Ford also worked with data experts Transport API for assay and insights for vehicle-specific information and with design company IDEO to enquiry what drivers "think, feel, and practise when behind the wheel [which] showed a significant difference between how people recollect they bulldoze, and how they actually bulldoze." Ane insight was that when drivers were asked if they wanted to be rated as ten out of 10 on a scale of their own choosing, many said that viii/10 would exist skillful enough.Perhaps in their minds, getting a perfect x might mean no spirited driving at all.

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A score for self-improvement and info for cheaper rates

Ford-LTW2016_DriveBehaviour_01-2-2A smartphone app rates the drivers' beliefs over the class of each day and assigns a rating for each solar day, plus a graph showing their operation over time. Ford plant a driver's score tended to vary from twenty-four hours to day, often in response to traffic conditions and routes driven.

The driver's long-term score (collected over weeks or months) provides the opportunity to reward the driver with more favorable rates on insurance, or mayhap lower rates on rental cars or machine-sharing programs, such as Ford's Go Ride project.

What Ford is doing parallels the commuter trackers such as Progressive Snapshot from Progressive Insurance. Both use a module that plugs into the OBD-Two (onboard diagnostics) connector and both track driver behavior. Ford's work is currently a research project that delves deeper into the fundamentals of behavior (no encephalon-moving ridge scanning headbands at Progressive). Both aim to meliorate your driving, and Progressive to do and so through the carrot-and-stick of insurance rates as well equally an insistent beep if you brake besides hard. The Snapshot monitor also deducts for driving at dangerous belatedly dark or early morning hours. Like the Ford experiment, it also tracks location, merely doesn't utilise that in calculating rates — in part because it gets into the touchy outcome of whether geo-tracking is a course of redlining with its racial overtones.

Ford was demonstrating the Smart Beliefs Project this week at London Applied science Week.