alt Hacker NewsOn the other hand, at age 20, with very high premiums, I got one of these devices which never beeped except on a few too-short exit ramps on highways in my city. The choice on these exits is to slow down traffic on the highway, or endure a "hard stop" by braking immediately when you are on the ramp, and coming to a full stop at the stop sign.
Just a few of these was enough that my "discount" was only a few dollars. I regret giving Progressive my driving data.
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If there's no extra exit lane, the right choice is to slow down traffic on the highway.
What will happen if there's some oil spill or brake failure at the point you think you should break hard?
There is no upside to giving personal data to a for-profit company with a monolithic amount of money and a clear view of the statistics around any activity.
The incentives just don't line up.
I had a somewhat similar experience - as I recall, most beeps happened as a result of a few stop lights with too-short yellows (e.g. the light changes yellow and you, even though you are below the speed limit, either panic stop or run the red light)
The only possible fix as a driver was to try to develop an intuition for spotting “stale” greens and start slowing down despite the green, anticipating the yellow.
I feel at least partially vindicated by the fact the lights in question eventually had their yellows extended.