Noblr

Not impressed. They score you in four areas and you can track the scores (based on a 1-5 rating): Focus, route selection, smoothness, and time of day. The app gives you an overall score in those areas, plus you can drill down to the individual trips to see those scores. That's handy.

I have 5 stars on focus and time of day. The app won't ding you if you pick up the phone (say, to check directions) and only records "texting" if you touch the screen. Fair enough. Time of day is no big deal since I rarely have any need to drive between 11:00 pm - 4:00 am. The other two areas? Total farce.

The smoothness part is extremely sensitive. The app dinged me for braking in parking lots. I wouldn't call it "hard braking," but apparently, any braking at all in a parking lot is considered hard braking since you can't really do a slow coasting brake. (How can you "hard brake" if you're only going 15 MPH to start with?) It also dinged me for acceleration. I guess it thinks moving when the green arrow comes on should be done very slowly. Or you shouldn't accelerate to merge onto the (highly recommended) highway.

Route choice, though, infuriates me. The route choice score is lowered if you don't take the highway route, if one is available. I live less than 5 miles from my regular trip destinations (post office, grocery store, etc.). Yesterday, the app gave me an 86 for route selection for my trip to a doctor's appointment. I live 4 miles from the Medical Center, and it's a straight shot down the street I live on. The app lowered my score because I didn't go 5 miles out of my way to take the interstate (the interstate that is under construction, has constant slowdowns due to accidents, and adds an extra 5 miles to my trip). If there is a way to go by highway, no matter how far out of my way it is, and I don't go that way, my route score is lowered. The app even tells me I'm taking optimal routes. It seems to me less mileage plus less traffic equals safer driving. But no, the Noblr customer service representative told me their studies show highway driving is safer. Not in Texas. The highways here are constantly under construction. Personally, I think it's their way of getting users to put more miles on the car, since many drivers wouldn't question the app's advice or tend to drive highways because that's all they know in their city.

Whatever. If my first variable rate bill isn't considerably lower than my regular bill was, I'm either finding a workaround for the route selection or I'm canceling the policy and dumping USAA, who I've used for decades.

Terrible service, won’t return calls and not even open on weekends, so hope and pray you don’t have an accident Friday evening! Their spy app is intrusive and they harass you if your phone is offline.