Estimated discount drops for no apprent reason

This morning (March 2) my father's estimated discount dropped from 25% to 22.5% for no apparent reason.

My father's driving stats are still better than mine but he has the lower discount now.

Why?

He has less daily driving
He has fewer braking incidents
He has less driving in the medium and high risk times
He has lower high speed
yet his discount dropped

For comparison, here are my stats.
The only place where mine are better is that I have more driving in the very low time period

Update March 3

This morning my estimate discount also dropped even though my stats have improved

My km per day dropped from 9.25 to 9.21.
My percentage driving in the medium risk times dropped from 10.26% to 10.2%.
There have been no speeding or braking events.

This makes no sense

I finally received 25% estimated discount

So that you know what is required to get an estimated 25% discount
Drive less than 3,500 km per year

Time of Day driving stats are not accurate

The Time of Day statistics have been confusing me.

The 'official' statistics on the Allstate website do not align with my calculations even though I am using the times and distances recorded by Allstate. I have double checked and triple checked my driving stats and then checked my father's stats and found the same problems (errors).

The error is not to my benefit as the error skews towards higher risk driving times.

The easiest check is the one driving event that I had during a "high risk" period between 11:00 pm and midnight.  I drove 9.0 km and at present I have a total distance driven of 1,006.8 km.

Calculation:    9.0 divided by 1,006.8 = 0.0089  or 0.89%
The absolute difference is  0.04%
The percentage different is 0.04%/0.89% = 4.5% error (not to my benefit)

If the discount is based on calculations of all our driving statistics how can we trust the hidden proprietary calculations if simple errors such as this are clearly evident?

Another oddity is that sometimes updates are made in real time and other times changes happen after days of no driving.

The program makes no sense and is confusing.


Same problem on my father's stats

Update:
Either the DriveWise program updates the Time of Day stats only periodically (not all the time after each trip) or there was a problem with the calculations.  I submitted an email to the DriveWise support team pointing out the errors and the next day the online numbers aligned with my own calculations but the anonymous support elf told me there are no problems with the system.

Update 2:
A DriveWise customer support elf told me that some of my calculations are off due to a problem in the FAQs.  Supposedly the FAQs were wrong about what time the high, medium and low risk period start. 

Old FAQ
Under this FAQ driving at 11:00 pm seems to fall under the LOW risk period but the system actually calculates it as HIGH risk.

 

New FAQ
The deleted the :01 from the start time of each risk time
High risk now starts at 11 pm

 

Even these new FAQs are technically wrong because according to this schedule 11:00pm is now both low and high risk according to this FAQ.

If they wanted to be proper it would state that LOW risk is from 12:00:01 pm to 11:59:59 pm

DriveWise estimate discount drops for no apparent reason

Understanding the model used by DriveWise to determine how good a driver you are and the level of estimated discount is difficult because there seem to be wonky inconsistencies.

My father is on the program and his driving stats are better than mine.

On January 9 he had an estimated discount of 22.5% with 10.57 km/day

On January 13 his driving average went up to 11.37 km/day but the estimated discount rose to 25%

On January 23 he had an estimated discount of 25%

One week later, on January 30 his discount dropped to 22.5% even though he is driving on average only 9.4 km/day.

We were both confused by the decrease because my father had:

• lower average daily drive (drop from 9.85 to 9.4 km/day)
• better time of day (low and medium dropped and very low increased)
• no speeding events
• no braking events

The driving stats were better BETTER but the estimated discount dropped.
My father asked DriveWise why this decrease happened and the following is their response:

Thank you for reaching out to the Drivewise Support Team.
The estimated discount will fluctuate as data is gathered.
At 2 months of the 6 month program there is still a lot of data to gather and the program is still understanding your normal driving habits. The Estimated Discount is an estimation of the discount you are tracking towards.
Once the program is completed the final and earned discount will be calculated and you will receive an email detailing the earned discount and a high level summary of the data collected.
On Jan 23 2017 the estimated discount of 25% was later updated to reflect vehicle use and on Jan 28 2017 the estimated discount adjusted to 22.5%.
As the Time of Day information is provided as a percentage even increased driving can maintain the same overall time of day statistics.

What kind of an answer is this?
They did not answer the question.


The same thing happened to me but unfortunately I did not take screenshots at the time to track my DriveWise discounts.

On December 2 I received my first estimate and it was 20%.
On December 8 my estimated discount dropped to 15%
 - there was no apparent reason as I did not drive more per day, did not have a braking incident nor drive more at the "bad" times of day.

I asked DriveWise why this happened but they never gave a real answer.  DriveWise is excellent at giving "non-answers" just repeating their marketing stuff.

After that, since I do not drive much, my estimated discount rose again slowly and has plateaued at 20%. 


Update:

February 11, driving is at 8.7 km/day but the discount is still at 22.5%

DriveWise is not really a great discount

Getting a 20% or 25% or  30% discount sounds like a great deal when you are paying $1,500 per year for car insurance - right?    A 30% discount is $450! WOW.

But when you think about it, the person who qualifies for the 30% discount is actually, in a way, getting screwed,

Think of it this way

• Someone that drives normally, to work and back, has a social life and takes some 'pleasure drives' can drive about  20,000 km per year.  This person might have a premium of $1,500 which on a pay per use basis is about 7.5 cents per km for insurance.
  
• Someone that drives very little (the retired weekend driver), might drive 3,000 km per year.  If this person qualifies for the 30% discount they will pay $1,050 per year which n a pay per use basis is about 35 cents per km for insurance.

So, the normal risk (average) driver pays 7.5c/km while the low risk driver pays 35c/km.

The supposed low risk driver pay 467% more for car insurance
on a pay per use basis than does the regular driver.

So, what kind of a discount is that?

Maybe we should have a standard pay per use model based on the distance you drive.

Maybe a standard 8 cents per kilometer.

That would make sense.

DriveWise braking events

In DriveWise

• Hard Braking = vehicle decelerates more than 13 to 16 km/hour per second
• Extreme Braking = vehicle decelerates more than 16 km/hour per second

DriveWise says that the number of braking events does not matter - they are interested in patterns of braking.  Drivewise support told me the following:

My question: For your best drivers, people that get a 20 to 25% discount, what is the typical number of braking events per week? 

Drivewise answer:  We do not have a specific answer that we can give to that, as we look at the number of braking events that occur during the full monitoring period in relation to the number of kilometers driven. What we can tell you is that people earning between 20% and 25% would typically have less than one braking event per week.
We are aware that the drivers around you may cause you to need to brake suddenly, however these instances should be rare. Our suggestion to try to avoid needing to brake suddenly in situations like this is to leave plenty of room between you and the drivers around you whenever possible to reduce the need to react to their behaviours.

I am suspicious of this as I have had 6 hard braking events and no extreme braking events.  My last braking event  was more than a month ago and my braking stats icon does not change. I have on average 1 braking event per 162 km or 1 braking event per 32 trips.  Not a lot of braking events.

It is very easy to trigger a hard braking event. 

• 3 of my braking events were to slow down for a yellow light
• 1 braking event for a guy that stopped fast in front of me
• 1 braking event for a guy that almost cut me off as he entered my lane
• 1 braking event at a Costco parking lot as some jerk ran in front of me

Tricks to avoid braking:

• Drive 10 km/h under the speed limit
• Have 3 car lengths between you and the car in front
• Start to slow down BEFORE the traffic light turns yellow
• ... or speed up when when the traffic light turns yellow to not have to stop.
• If a small animal runs in front of your car, don't stop.

I would assume that having fast reflexes and being able to stop quickly is the sign of a good driver, especially when you drive in Toronto with stupid pedestrians jaywalking and ignorant bicyclists who think they own the road.


Other Reviews

Drivewise by Allstate 

Drive Wise: My Thoughts and Opinions on Driving Safe
My Experience Using Allstate's Drive Wise Device

Does Drive Wise actually encourage unsafe driving?

I feel like Drive Wise encourages running red lights. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but if I'm driving along at or even slightly below the speed limit, and the light I'm approaching goes from green to yellow to red very quickly--which seems to happen a lot around here--I have to make a decision to brake a little harder than usual or speed up and go through the red light just after it turns. I don't SLAM on my brakes to do that, but I sometimes have to slow down rather quickly. And each time that happens, Drive Wise records an "event" and lowers my projected discount. I'd be concerned that people who install Drive Wise might be tempted to run through those lights more often.

Some of my DriveWise estimated discounts

Every once in a while I check my estimated discounts.
To help you get a sense of what to expect take a look at these

On December 18, 2016 I had one estimate early in the day at 17.5%

Later in the day they recalculated time of day driving averages and my estimated discount changed.  It seems that driving between 10:00am and noon, during weekdays, has an important effect in the discount.  Strange thing is that the road congestion in Mississauga between 9:00am and noon (medium risk time) is lower than the road congestion between 5:00pm and 7:00p (low risk) which is high congestion rush hour.  Strange - it makes no sense.

After 2 months

By January 6 my driving was on average 12.64 km/day or 4,164 km per year but my discount is still just 20%

Halfway through the 6 month "test"

I have 6 "hard brakes" (no extreme braking events) and just one 9 km trip at about 11:30 pm
Driving is just 10.77 mm/day or 3930 km/year  and still just 20% discount.

Another person in the family also taking the test, 1/3 way through the program has much better stats with only 1 braking event and 3,365 km/year but at only 22.5% discount.

It appears that getting a 30% discount is very very very difficult.