This week after seeing the news of a new app that #Desjardins #Insurance is offering, #Ajusto, I was intrigued to take a look to see what it was all about. In the #CBC news article it was identified as having some privacy concerns. Though the privacy concerns was not what caught my attention. Desjardins is offering this app to complement your car insurance plan with them to potentially give you a discount depending on how you drive based on the data the app records. This discount could be up to a 25% discount on your car insurance depending on your score that the app assigns to you.

While reading this article there was a section in it with a testimonial from a employee of Desjardins:

Susanne Silva, a section manager in Desjardins's call centre, has been using the app since September 2014, and now has an overall score of 92.

"So right now, I'm trending at about 20 per cent savings," Silva says.

So I was curious on how hard it is to reach a score of 92 to get a 20% discount? The app is available for Android and iOS and you can try it our without having insurance with Desjardins. So I done just that, decided to install it and test it out during my normal driving routes. The only difference is that I was going to stick exactly to the posted speed limits (Speed) and do no hard braking or acceleration (Driving Smoothness). Time of day of driving (Time of day travelled) is hard to avoid for most drivers as they are on a schedule most times for work or other activities that are time bound as well as distance (Distance Traveled) due to where I live and my place of work. From Desjardins website the following is stated:

How does my driving affect my score and savings?

The application collects and analyzes driving data listed below. Desjardins Insurance uses this information to calculate a score that will be turned into savings on your auto insurance renewal.

Driving smoothness
The application uses 3 criteria to determine driving smoothness: fast acceleration, hard braking and hard cornering.

Speed
Respecting the speed limit decreases the risk of an accident and helps improve road safety. That being said, the parameters of the new Ajusto app have been set to allow a small margin over the legal speed limit (between 10 and 15 km/h according to the posted limit), without compromising the safety values Desjardins Insurance wants to promote with its Ajusto program. To maximize your score and, by extension your discount, drive at a safe speed!

Time of day travelled
The risk of an accident is higher at certain times of the day. For instance, driving at night is considered more risky than driving during the day because of driver fatigue and reduced visibility. The application associates a level of risk with different times of day.

Distance traveled
The less you drive, the more you save. Shorter trips pay off because they increase your score!

I've been driving using the app for about a week now and have come to the conclusion that it was not full tested or their numbers are lying. I have not been able to reach a score of 90 no matter what I do or change, as well as many of the speed areas the app records does not match up properly with posted limits. As stated above from the Ajusto website, the app allows for a "small margin over the legal speed limit (between 10 and 15 km/h according to the posted limit)". I can say without a doubt that this is incorrect. 

As you can see in the image to the left, there is some red and red as you know is not good. The small stretch of red is a school zone. That road is 80 km/h but is only 60 during certain times of the day and 80 for the other times. Time stamp on the image says 18:14 hrs, so I was outside of school hours doing 80 km/h and still got a red mark against my driving. The school zone issue has happened multiple times since a lot of the school zones are like this.

In this image to the right there is still a lot of red and was mostly highway driving with the cruse control set at 100 km/h yet I still get red during the whole time on the highway. So for Desjardins to state there is a 10 - 15 km/h forgiveness on the recorded data is incorrect. 

As for the time of day traveled, this is also difficult for most drivers who are normally driving during the morning and afternoon due to work commitments. The only times so far that it has been green for the time of day has been on Saturday or Sunday's especially in the mornings. 

Overall I think it is a good idea for drivers, as I tended to drive much more cautious while using the app but I think Desjardins will need to still do some tweaks to the recorded data to make it more reliable. Though I will say I have never had so many angry drivers pass by me in legal and illegal places honking their horn while giving me the finger do to me doing the speed limit. Maybe its time for something for drivers to be charged more due to their driving habits based on those reactions.