GRA
Well-known member
Making the switch effective tomorrow (won't get the OBD II dongle for a few days though). Given that my car sits in my driveway all week long and only gets used for out of town trips, switching from conventional insurance was overdue. Coverage is roughly comparable (I had CSAA before), increasing in some areas and decreasing in others. As it is, I could drive about 15k miles a year before I'd equal what I was paying yearly for insurance. As I'm likely to drive no more than 1/3rd of that (my 2003 Forester, bought new, has 62,800 miles on the odometer, and owing to a variety of unrelated issues including injuries/illness, lack of snow, fires etc. that have kept my driving way down from normal, I've only put on 3,800 miles total in the past three years), I should save myself at least 40-45%/year, despite previously having the lowest yearly mileage allowance (5k) that CSAA offered. I've been very conscientious about not using my car for trips where I can instead use my bike or transit for the past three years or so, and this just gives me one more incentive to reduce my car usage to a minimum.
Went with Metromile as they just use a base rate plus your monthly mileage, rather than the more extensive monitoring of speed/accel/decel/location/time/road etc. that the more Big-Brotherish companies use. If I were willing to let an insurer monitor all that I'd probably save money, as I don't drive like a teenager anymore and have a clean record, but it wasn't worth it to me. I suspect many people here who drive less than the typical American does can benefit from PAYD. I thought about doing it last year, but inertia and hesitation about giving an outside agency access to _any_ driving info beyond an occasional odometer reading delayed me doing it until now.
Just thought I'd give a little info for those who might be thinking of switching. One negative point for those who use LEAFSpy or similar, is that you couldn't use it unless you had a dual adapter, as the insurer's unit has to be in the OBD 2 port.
Went with Metromile as they just use a base rate plus your monthly mileage, rather than the more extensive monitoring of speed/accel/decel/location/time/road etc. that the more Big-Brotherish companies use. If I were willing to let an insurer monitor all that I'd probably save money, as I don't drive like a teenager anymore and have a clean record, but it wasn't worth it to me. I suspect many people here who drive less than the typical American does can benefit from PAYD. I thought about doing it last year, but inertia and hesitation about giving an outside agency access to _any_ driving info beyond an occasional odometer reading delayed me doing it until now.
Just thought I'd give a little info for those who might be thinking of switching. One negative point for those who use LEAFSpy or similar, is that you couldn't use it unless you had a dual adapter, as the insurer's unit has to be in the OBD 2 port.
