Today's auto insurance pricing model has been considered inefficient by many as the traditional factors that contribute to your Oregon auto insurance rate such as driver characteristics (age, gender, marital status, & address), your vehicle usage, your driving record, and your insurance bureau score do not correctly assess the true risk of a driver.

It's common sense that the more time a vehicle spends on the road the more it is prone to a loss rather than when it is sitting in the garage, right? Well the data collected by insurance companies suggests this and those individuals who are low mileage drivers often subsidize insurance costs for high mileage drivers.

The alternative to the traditional auto insurance pricing model is known as ‘pay as you drive auto insurance' or what is also called ‘usage based auto insurance'. With ‘pay as you drive' auto insurance the price of auto insurance is tied to the number of miles driven. Those individuals who drive more will be charged a higher premium. Other rating factors such as location, age, vehicle type, and driving record are still incorporated into this price, so higher-risk drivers would pay more per mile than lower-risk drivers. For many years there has been great interest and demand for ‘pay as you drive auto insurance' and until recently the technology behind the effort to get ‘pay as you drive' auto insurance into place was not reliable and was also too costly to manage.

In 2007 Progressive Insurance introduced Oregon drivers with the first pay as you drive auto insurance option with TripSense. Drives who signed up for TripSense receive a small data-logging device called a TripSensor that plugs into a port in the car and collects information about how much and when the vehicle is driven. The information from the TripSensor is used to calculate the renewal discount the customer can receive. A Progressive Insurance press release stated that participants in the program could receive up to a 25 percent discount when their auto policy renewed. I have not had an opportunity to meet anyone who currently has this plan in place.

Today, Travelers Insurance has launched their IntelliDrive auto insurance program offering Oregon drivers their spin on ‘pay as you drive' auto insurance. When you sign up for the Travelers Insurance IntelliDrive program you get an immediate discount on your auto insurance. After you sign up you schedule a time for an authorized technician to install a small data collection device in your vehicle (1996 or newer models), this device will record critical information about your car that might make you eligible for an additional discount of up to 20% when your auto insurance renews. Additional features of the Travelers program are:

1. You can track your vehicle's speed, fuel efficiency, carbon emissions, and other key performances through the secure IntelliDrive website.
2. If you've ever wondered 'where is my car is right now' you can ‘ping' your vehicle from the IntelliDrive Web site which will display the car's current location on a map.
3. If you have younger drivers in the house you can set up ‘geo fencing' which allows you to specify a driving radius for the vehicle, you are altered with real time messaging sent to your computer or cell phone if the vehicle has gone beyond the limits that have been set up.

If you are a low mileage driver you deserve to pay less for your auto insurance, contact me at 503-922-4847 for a pay as you drive auto insurance quote.