Unfortunately they don’t work. I used one for a time, and basically took even my slowest, most gentle start in order to register as safe acceleration. Stopping was a disaster where most of the time I needed to just put it in neutral and coast to a stop or risk watching my rates go up. Had so many “yellow” trips, it was insane. And then if someone were really worried I can actually see it being distracting where they might now have to consider a rate increase when slowing down to avoid an accident which, given how bad a decision making people are already, doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea.
I drive a BRZ, and I think the app used the accelerometer in the phone, so maybe it was calibrated for a big soft thing and just assumed that anything I did was street racing.
For context, I’m the kinda person to stop at all stop signs, even the one at the end of a drive-thru at 3am where I can see for miles all around me. I keep following distances so well that I actually don’t use my brakes enough and they get rustier quicker than normal, especially since I drive so rarely these days. These apps would punish me for my driving and reward people in large SUVs who are more likely to turn into a pedestrian than anything(but a reasonable speed!).
Don’t forget, accelerating quickly is the correct and safe thing to do in a lot of scenarios. If people could stop merging into 60 MPH highway traffic at 35, that would be great. That’s a common driving experience where making use of your cars 0-60 time is important and safer, but the monitoring system will just see “rapid acceleration, that’s unsafe”.
Yea holy shit, it’s insane that people will try to merge like that. And some on-ramps are quite short, which I support because it’s less land wasted, so you really gotta boogey.
This can be an issue when a short ramp has a curve. For larger or heavier vehicles it can be unsafe or straight up impossible to reach high enough speed on those ramps.
And the incredibly large vehicles can be easily seen and accommodated for. One exception does not make the idea bad and besides, for many of the oversized ramps found in downtowns one issue is that trucks of that size shouldn’t even be allowed there anyways. North Americans are just used to the idea of shoving an 18-wheeler or whatever into areas that should never be in but it’s not good just because it’s normal.
It isn’t just 18 wheelers that would struggle, city & school buses, service vehicles for infrastructure, box trucks and large vans used for trades and deliveries.
City and school buses don’t go on highways, or at least it is vanishingly rare, and service vehicles are likewise not nearly common enough for it to have any kind of impact, nor are they even often present on the highway during busy times. Box trucks and vans are more common, but they’re not exactly powerless and they aren’t common.
Besides, highways through the middle of town shouldn’t be there at all so I don’t really give a damn.
Unfortunately they don’t work. I used one for a time, and basically took even my slowest, most gentle start in order to register as safe acceleration. Stopping was a disaster where most of the time I needed to just put it in neutral and coast to a stop or risk watching my rates go up. Had so many “yellow” trips, it was insane. And then if someone were really worried I can actually see it being distracting where they might now have to consider a rate increase when slowing down to avoid an accident which, given how bad a decision making people are already, doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea.
I drive a BRZ, and I think the app used the accelerometer in the phone, so maybe it was calibrated for a big soft thing and just assumed that anything I did was street racing.
For context, I’m the kinda person to stop at all stop signs, even the one at the end of a drive-thru at 3am where I can see for miles all around me. I keep following distances so well that I actually don’t use my brakes enough and they get rustier quicker than normal, especially since I drive so rarely these days. These apps would punish me for my driving and reward people in large SUVs who are more likely to turn into a pedestrian than anything(but a reasonable speed!).
Don’t forget, accelerating quickly is the correct and safe thing to do in a lot of scenarios. If people could stop merging into 60 MPH highway traffic at 35, that would be great. That’s a common driving experience where making use of your cars 0-60 time is important and safer, but the monitoring system will just see “rapid acceleration, that’s unsafe”.
Yea holy shit, it’s insane that people will try to merge like that. And some on-ramps are quite short, which I support because it’s less land wasted, so you really gotta boogey.
This can be an issue when a short ramp has a curve. For larger or heavier vehicles it can be unsafe or straight up impossible to reach high enough speed on those ramps.
And the incredibly large vehicles can be easily seen and accommodated for. One exception does not make the idea bad and besides, for many of the oversized ramps found in downtowns one issue is that trucks of that size shouldn’t even be allowed there anyways. North Americans are just used to the idea of shoving an 18-wheeler or whatever into areas that should never be in but it’s not good just because it’s normal.
It isn’t just 18 wheelers that would struggle, city & school buses, service vehicles for infrastructure, box trucks and large vans used for trades and deliveries.
City and school buses don’t go on highways, or at least it is vanishingly rare, and service vehicles are likewise not nearly common enough for it to have any kind of impact, nor are they even often present on the highway during busy times. Box trucks and vans are more common, but they’re not exactly powerless and they aren’t common.
Besides, highways through the middle of town shouldn’t be there at all so I don’t really give a damn.