Metromile, provider of pay-per-mile car insurance, surveyed Illinois drivers and found out how drivers decided on insurance and what they want. Metromile also recently added street-sweeping alerts to its service to help drivers avoid street sweeping parking tickets and announced a promotion.
Survey Results
More than 62 percent of Illinois drivers commute less than 20 miles by car per day, with nearly 30 percent commuting less than five miles per day. Despite the low daily mileage, 36 percent stated that what bothers them the most about driving a car in Illinois is traffic and congestion.
Family influence is important when it comes to choosing a car insurance provider because nearly 25 percent of people said they chose their provider based on the fact that their family members used them previously.
20 percent selected car insurance because they received the best rate.
More than 40 percent of Illinois drivers are paying an average of $75 to $150 per month for car insurance but a majority of drivers are not bothered by what they pay – in fact, only 10 percent of people said the cost of car insurance bothered them most about driving a car.
The other costs of driving and car ownership add up though. Twenty-five percent stated gas prices as an annoyance and another 10 percent don’t like the cost of parking and parking tickets.
Forty-three percent of respondents said that it would be helpful to receive information about their car health, another 37 percent said they’d like maintenance and service reminders and an additional 34 percent said they’d like to see miles per gallon on an ongoing basis.
Metromile uses a OBD-II port device to monitor drivers. The device used by the company was recently hacked by UCSD researchers.
Sweeping Street Sweeping Alerts
Metromile announced that its latest release includes street sweeping alerts for residents in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood. Violations of parking on streets on street-sweeping day can cost $63-$73.
Working in tandem with Metromile’s connected-car devices, the Metromile Pulse, which plugs into a vehicle’s OBD-II port, or the Metromile Tag, a free, wireless device for automobiles that uses Apple’s iBeacon technology, the smart driving app uses onboard GPS to note the location of the parked vehicle. The device uses city data and Metromile’s internal information to determine if a user’s car is parked in a street sweeping zone. If so, it sends a push notification to drivers 12 hours before scheduled street cleaning. Drivers can also opt into text or email notifications. People who don’t heed the warning and move their car get another alert with one hour to spare.
Metromile also announced the promotion of Jose Mercado to Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Metromile, who wil continue to report directly to Metromile CEO Dan Preston.