State Farm / FordPass / Connected Car Enrollment ?

[Sean97OH]

State Farm has a "Drive Safe & Save" program. It uses a State Farm phone app and a provided "beacon" which is attached to the windshield. It tracks real time driving information and offers insurance discounts of 10% to 30% depending on what they perceive as safe driving behavior.

State Farm also has a "Connected Car" program which works with FordPass. Apparently no phone app or beacon is required. See

https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/auto/discounts/drive-safe-save

https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/auto/discounts/drive-safe-save/connected-car

My agent and I spent an hour yesterday trying to get Connected Car to work. We never saw an "in-vehicle agreement." The State Farm support ppl seem only to understand how to trouble shoot app / beacon problems. Connected Car problems are referred to Ford, but the support number State Farm gives out seems dead.

Has anyone here successfully enrolled into the State Farm / FordPass Connected Car program without using their app and beacon?

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[GDN]

I have not - I have State Farm and just use the beacon as I don't think the Ford telematics was an option a year ago. I've put my beacon in a far back corner of the moon roof - so I never see it.

I'd be tempted to ditch it completely and move to the Fordpass set up, but have not tried it as of yet.

 

[Jim Lewis]

I've tried both the Drive Safe & Save with the Bluetooth beacon and the Ford Connected Vehicle program. I quickly went back to Drive Safe & Save from the Connected Vehicle program.

Just a warning. My State Farm agent told me that once I dropped out of Drive Safe & Save and went for the Ford Connected Vehicle program, I would not be allowed to go back. So she wanted to make sure I was ready for that. She also said as far as she knew, I was the only client who wanted to use the Ford Connected Vehicle program rather than Drive Safe & Save.

I was miffed at the Drive Safe & Save programming. If a light changed unexpectedly and you had to brake hard, you'd get a demerit for "hard braking," which my wife and I thought was just encouraged running yellow lights. There were certain curves in my driving where going around at the posted speed would give me a demerit for excessive acceleration (Drive Safe & Save programmers have never heard of centripetal acceleration, I guess). Turning too abruptly into a two-way turn lane in the center of a heavily trafficked multilane highway from a perpendicular side street would do the same. I got nipped for "speeding" on an Interstate where my phone's GPS had me on the access road instead or accelerating in an expressway entrance lane even though I was about to merge with traffic at the posted speed on the Interstate.

So I tried the Ford Connected Vehicle program because I was getting high scores in the FordPass driving logs but quickly pleaded with my agent to let me return to Drive Safe & Save. The last straw for the Connected Vehicle Program was having one trip appear three times with different data fragments in each of the driving logs and ratings. Also, there is no feedback on what kind of data you generate. The sign-up material says the Driving Rating and the (regenerative) Braking Rating that appear in the FordPass app have no direct relationship to the data Ford is transmitting to State Farm. It's collected for six months, and the only feedback you get, IIRC, is how big a discount you're awarded.

So I told my State Farm agent how dissatisfied I was with the lack of feedback for the Connected Vehicle program and how bad the reliability of the FordPass driving log/rating was (maybe that's why it's been removed from the FordPass app?). She connected with some higher administrative folks in the Ford program to get me removed, she said. I had no trouble setting the Ford Connected Vehicle program up initially, and one day, my Sync4a screen just announced I was being removed, along with instructions on how to complete my exit.

You don't have to stick the Drive Safe & Save beacon to any window surface. I can't because all windows and the moon roof are tinted. I just keep my beacon in a plastic cup in a cupholder in the center console, and my phone is mounted on the dashboard almost directly over the beacon: Convert coin holder to phone mount (Lariat) | Page 3 | Ford Lightning Forum For F-150 Lightning EV Pickup: News, Owners, Discussions, Community (f150lightningforum.com).

Complications came with both my wife and I signed up for the Drive Safe & Save program, with both of us listed by our agent as drivers for both our vehicles. We had to be careful that the driver always gets into the vehicle first with his or her iPhone. Even so, many times, my wife would still end up recorded as the driver of my truck even though she's never driven it. And our registration was screwed up. She gets to see both her drives and mine in either vehicle, whereas I only get to see my drives. So if my drive is recorded as hers, I don't get to see how I did unless I look at her iPhone. The agent said the way to cure this was to split my vehicle off to a separate policy with a new BT beacon for me only for that policy. The agent would arrange things so separate policies wouldn't affect our multi-car insurance discount. That seemed to work.

Except in a recent trip downtown to see the movie Oppenheimer in IMAX 70 mm, my wife figured out a way to fool the system. I was recorded as driving downtown in my truck, except according to Drive Safe & Safe, I drove home in her 2017 Honda Accord, even though it was in a body shop at the time being repaired from an encounter with an erratic neighborhood exit gate.

With her car in the shop, she put her Drive Safe & Save beacon in her purse for safekeeping. Somewhere in walking to the theater and later back to the parking garage, my iPhone latched onto her car's beacon and ignored my own truck beacon when she and I got back into my truck. I left that as a mystery for the Drive Safe & Save folks to scratch their heads over if they should ever come across it somehow.

 

[TaxmanHog]

I hope that Ford and State Farm have a data sharing and security agreement that ensures no violations of FordPass access via third parties.

Does the State farm system need to know your FP login name and password?

 

[02Reaper]

No matter what, its just a ploy. You wont save anything by doing this, and if you do, they will eventually raise your rates anyway.

 

[Jim Lewis]

Does the State farm system need to know your FP login name and password?

IIRC, the owner initiates the Ford Connected Vehicle insurance-related program through the truck Sync screen. If you go to Connectivity, Connected Vehicle Features, Insurance-Related Data (down at the bottom), that's how I initiated my participation in the Connected Vehicle insurance program. Right now, when I look at that menu item, it is grayed out and displays a LOCK. So perhaps it did not become active until I requested that my State Farm agent switch me to the Ford insurance data sharing program.

State Farm doesn't need to know anything about your Ford account, AFAIK. The connection and provision of driving data through the vehicle system was initiated by me through my vehicle and finally terminated or consented to terminate by me from within the vehicle, IIRC.

The downloaded PDF 2023 Ford Lightning Owners Manual and the current online manual at 2023 Ford F-150 Owner Manuals are terrible at providing help on insurance-related data sharing. When I search either my PDF download or the online manual(s) on "insurance," nothing comes up. There is not much depth in the online explanation of Connected Vehicle Features. @Ford Motor Company, this is something that should be clearly and carefully explained in detail in the owner's manual. Sorry if I missed the explanation. Someone point me to where it's found if it's there at all.

 

[uccbcc]

@Jim Lewis

Where you connected one way or another long enough to notice if your rate changed based on the method?

To the post about not saving money - I'm getting a $170 discount on my 22 Maverick and $295 on my etron. Been with SF forever and rates have stayed steady - but definitely better saving almost $500 every 6 months.

 

[Jim Lewis]

Where you connected one way or another long enough to notice if your rate changed based on the method?

I only vaguely remember the agent telling me that the same discounts were available either way. The only direct announcement of discount that I saw was in the Drive Safe & Safe app, but once I switched to letting the data being collected all the time anyway by Ford get sent to State Farm, I didn't think the Drive Safe & Safe app would report any discount there as the agent told me the two data reporting/analysis systems were unrelated, IIRC.

The discounts currently reported in the Drive Safe & Save app are $35.48 for the 2017 Honda Accord and $56.85 for my 2023 Lightning Lariat ER vehicle (price with sales tax, about $95K). These discounts are about 10% of our 6-month premium for each vehicle. Presumably, we will not collect any additional discounts up to the 30% maximum possible until the end of the premium period, when they have our whole driving history accumulated and can see how well we did and how far we drove during the covered period.

It's important to remember the two DIFFERENT components of the discount are THE MILEAGE YOU DRIVE and YOUR DRIVING BEHAVIOR, as reported by your phone GPS and accelerometers (for the Drive Safe & Save Program). I am already getting a discount as a low-mileage driver, so that limits how big a discount I can get through the Drive Safe & Save program. The way I understand it, you could be an excellent driver, but if you drive 100K miles a year, you're not going to get as big a discount (or pay as low a premium) as someone who only drives 5K miles a year. State Farm says in a couple of places that the more you drive, the more likely you are to be involved in an accident, even if it's not your fault, and that affects your discount and insurance rates. To qualify for a SF umbrella liability policy, we have to max out on our auto insurance liability coverage, so perhaps that partly limits how much DS & S discount and how low a premium we can pay for each vehicle.

Anyone interested in the different options available should check things out with their agent directly. My memory of what the agent told me and what I have read is foggy.

 

[GDN]

I know that SF can connect to GM vehicles, Ford is a recent addition - it is all sanctioned through GM and Ford - they can't tap in otherwise. I don't know if files are provided or if it is captured live like it is with the beacon.

My scores are ~70% as they believe letting your foot off the accelerator and using region is hard braking. This still is getting me a very good discount on the quoted prices, however.

All insurance has taken a huge jump in TX again. Houses last year and autos now this year. It is likely time for me to shop again, but from what I've seen and heard the big jumps are across the board.

 

[Chado]

I completely gave up on trying to get a good score with the drive safe app.
I tried to see how bad of a score i could get and was surprised to see it didn't change much
One thing that did make a huge change was the time my wife's app stopped working and it didn't log any drives, the discount went from $45 to $5

Also is that discount shown on the app per month or per 6 months? never really paid attention lol

 

[GDN]

Also is that discount shown on the app per month or per 6 months? never really paid attention lol

The discount for 6 months.

 

[Peddyr]

The Cyber/IoT side of me cringes when people hook up 3rd party devices to their vehicles for tracking purposes. The location finder/apps on my phone are intrustive enough, but not knowing how often the firmware in those things is updated and what happens if someone with a Flipper Zero gets into it, makes it a hard no for me.

 

[River Rat]

Like that's going to happen, bad enough Ford has the data. From my cold dead hands!
Oh well with Social Credit Scoring they will know soon enough

 

[GDN]

The Cyber/IoT side of me cringes when people hook up 3rd party devices to their vehicles for tracking purposes. The location finder/apps on my phone are intrustive enough, but not knowing how often the firmware in those things is updated and what happens if someone with a Flipper Zero gets into it, makes it a hard no for me.

I don't truly like it - but the discount is several hundred bucks and at least I know they have my data. You would likely be scared for sure if you knew everything that was able to track you. There is no privacy. It's not just the trackers either, it's absurd how much money those people make selling your location.

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