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If You Think You Can Stop On A Dime, It's More Like 20,000 Dimes

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Most of us drive as if we can stop on a dime – try, 4.2 football fields.

That’s how far it takes the average driver to come to a complete stop from just 60 mph, according to a recent study from Progressive Insurance, just in time for the summer driving season. Those results are not on some test track, that’s based on an analysis of over 13 billion miles worth of actual, real-world driving data.

The bottom line is, most of us need to leave more – a whole lot more – following distance, said Dave Pratt, general manager of usage based insurance for Progressive.

“Now we have real data how long it takes to stop,” Pratt said in a recent phone interview.

Usage based insurance, also called “pay as you drive,” is where drivers plug in a device that monitors how they actually drive, in return for a discount for safe drivers.

Progressive’s version of this is called Snapshot, but major competitors have their own versions with their own brand names, like AllstateDrivewise, or State Farm Drive Safe and Save.

The technologies vary. Progressive’s Snapshot gets input from the speedometer, Pratt said. The device measures behaviors that are predictive of claims, like hard acceleration and especially hard braking.

Interestingly, hard braking correlates closer to claims – that is, accidents – than hard acceleration, although of course frequent hard acceleration is also a bad sign, Pratt said. Progressive recently released what it calls its Leadfoot Report explaining all this, but the "lead foot" in question is the one on the brakes, not on the gas.

“Say we have series of hard brakes,” he said. That’s “very highly correlated” to claims, Pratt said. “Hard accelerations are also a factor. … We’re always working on improving our scoring. It (hard acceleration) is a predictor also, but hard braking is more so.”

Progressive said its program is best for those who drive an average of less than 50 miles per day, who rarely drive from midnight to 4 a.m., and who use their brakes gently. Pratt said about two-thirds of the drivers who sign up for the program earn a discount. The average annual discount is about $150, the company said.

“The benefit to us is, to keep people longer,” Pratt said. “The people who get the discounts stay with us a lot longer than average.”