Mercury Insurance announced that the company has made its usage-based insurance app, MercuryGO, available to drivers in Virginia to help improve driving skills and traffic safety. The app acts as a virtual driving coach, providing skill scores that give real-time feedback about driving behavior. Mercury auto insurance policyholders who enroll to use the app immediately receive a 5% participation discount and teen drivers will receive up to a 10% discount. Then, when MercuryGO customers renew their policies, they could receive a discount of up to 40%, depending upon their driving score.
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“Mercury Insurance wants to leverage technology to make driving safer, and we also want to reward drivers for being cautious behind the wheel,” said Mercury Insurance Director of Product Management Mike Dawdy. “MercuryGO is an intuitive and easy-to-use app that helps you stay safe in the driver’s seat and it puts money back in your bank account.”
The Virginia Department of Transportation reports there were 967 motor vehicle traffic fatalities and 161 injuries a day on Virginia roadways in 2021.
The MercuryGO app generates a driving skill score, which is calculated based on categories that are closely correlated with car crashes: excessive speeding, hard braking, distracted driving (i.e., phone motion and screen interaction), and road type.
Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), Mercury’s technology partner, is the world’s largest smartphone telematics provider, winning multiple awards. CMT is the pioneer of: usage-based insurance with smartphones (in 2012); the measurement of phone distraction (2013); behavior-based insurance (2014); and real-time crash alerts with roadside assistance (2015).
“Mercury Insurance is utilizing the DriveWell platform to help drivers reduce distracted driving, speeding, and hard braking by keeping them engaged and providing timely feedback,” said Ryan McMahon, CMT’s Vice President of Insurance and Government Affairs. “MercuryGO will help make Virginia roads safer and has the potential to reduce the number of car collisions, injuries and fatalities.”
CMT’s research shows that 37% of all car trips in the U.S. in 2019 involved significant driver phone distraction; between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., that figure rises to 41% of all U.S. car trips. MercuryGO will help solve that problem by using technology that has reduced distracted driving by 29%, speeding by 45%, and hard braking by 17%.