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Ford wants to get into the business of helping drivers charge per unit their skills. An onboard plug-in module plus a smartphone apps gives you lot a "personal driving score." Ford likens its Driver Behavior Project, part of Ford'south bigger Smart Mobility button, to a fitness app that tracks how many calories you burn or how long y'all've exercised. Right now it's a trial plan in London, merely it could aggrandize. Ford says it provides feedback that helps drivers cocky-improve and a ratings score score that enables them to authorize for cheaper car rentals or lower insurance rates.

That assumes Ford's drivers are good drivers, or the app convinces them to mend their wicked ways on the highway. Otherwise, their insurance and rental rates won't go down. The way it works now with insurance company tracking modules is that there is a hazard to reduce rates with skilful driving beliefs, but also the possibility of higher rates if you accept a so-so rating. Drivers take some concerns that in the future insurers might push for higher rates for those who opt non to have driver tracking. Large Blood brother and all.

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How the Driver 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 bicycle angle, and steering micro-movements, besides as fourth dimension of day and location. In addition, the subjects were tested within a simulator, where a 360-degree mural was projected onto a half-dome; similar an aircraft simulator, this one could vibrate, tip, or tilt to emulate the car'south reaction to steering and braking. In that location are both normal and stressful driving situations. Sensors record driver eye movement, heart rate, and encephalon waves.

The project covered 160,000 km (100,000 miles) and 4,000 hours of driving. Ford besides worked with data experts Transport API for analysis and insights for vehicle-specific information and with design company IDEO to research what drivers "think, feel, and practice when behind the wheel [which] showed a pregnant difference between how people call up they drive, and how they really drive." Ane insight was that when drivers were asked if they wanted to be rated every bit x out of 10 on a scale of their ain choosing, many said that 8/x would be good enough.Perhaps in their minds, getting a perfect 10 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' behavior over the course of each day and assigns a rating for each day, plus a graph showing their performance over time. Ford found a driver's score tended to vary from day to day, often in response to traffic weather condition and routes driven.

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

What Ford is doing parallels the commuter trackers such as Progressive Snapshot from Progressive Insurance. Both use a module that plugs into the OBD-Ii (onboard diagnostics) connector and both track driver behavior. Ford's piece of work is currently a inquiry project that delves deeper into the fundamentals of behavior (no encephalon-wave scanning headbands at Progressive). Both aim to meliorate your driving, and Progressive to do so through the carrot-and-stick of insurance rates as well equally an insistent beep if yous brake besides difficult. The Snapshot monitor also deducts for driving at unsafe late night or early morning hours. Like the Ford experiment, it also tracks location, but doesn't use that in calculating rates — in function because information technology gets into the touchy issue of whether geo-tracking is a form of redlining with its racial overtones.

Ford was demonstrating the Smart Beliefs Projection this week at London Technology Calendar week.