Speed Limit Tracking Disaster

It appears that discovery is trying to change driver behavior in order to reduce claims by offering rewards for good driving behavior. One of the things that Discovery tracks is speeding, and this is the reason for my frustration.

In the city it is clear that the speed limits are 60km/h in all residential areas (except for a few exceptions say 40km/h), and 120km/h on most freeways, but regardless the speed limits are usually clearly marked.

On the other hand if you take a drive through the rural roads in Mpumalanga, there are very few speed limit signs. The only way to drive a route on these roads and not get penalized for speeding is to never go above 60km/h even if you know that the road is a 100kmh road since there are always sections along the road that are not marked where Discovery claims that the speed limit is 60km/h.

Let us look at an example: I am driving at 76km/h on a road with a speed limit of 80km/h. Unbeknownst me and without any signs the speed limit changes to 60km/h (according to Discovery). As far as I know I am very safely 4km/h under the speed limit and 14km/h under the speed where I would start losing points, but in reality I will be losing 2 points every 10 seconds for traveling 76km/h in a 60km/h zone (according to Discovery). If you do the math in 130 seconds you will lose 26 points, this translates to a distance of just under 3km. The above example is guaranteed unless we never drive faster than 60km/h or only drive on National Freeways which tend to be quite well marked.

As far as incentive goes, if it is not possible to do one of these drives without losing the maximum of 25 points anyway, there is not a whole lot of point even trying. Basically Discovery is telling s that unless we stick to the city streets don't even bother trying to follow the speed limit.

I queried a trip with discovery to which the response was "show me the speed limit sign that says the speed limit is 80km/h not 60km/h" as Discovery seemed to think. In this case there is a speed sign of 80km/h about 3km down the road, but that doesn't prove anything. On the other hand there is absolutely no sign which shows a speed change down to 60km/h. However even if I could prove that there was a speed limit sign, is it really worth the effort? It doesn't address the real problem here.

I asked Discovery how I can plan a trip in advance as they advocate in there online training. How can I check the speed limits in advance. On the phone it was suggested that I use google but they were unable to elaborate how to do it. Their second suggestion is that I speak to each municipality. They were unable to tell me which database discovery uses to check the speed limits. And even if I provide them with a route that I plan to make they will not be able to give me the speed limit changes along the route.

In order to address their comment of getting the speed limits from google maps, this only makes sense if google maps and discovery use the same speed limit database (which discovery was not able to confirm). I can confirm that Discovery and Waze do not use the same speed limit database.

What I have learned so far about discovery insure so far is as follows: 1. If you are driving on a residential road in the city you will be rewarded for sticking to the speed limit. 2. If you are doing a long trip on rural roads, then do not waste you time trying to preserve your 25 daily discovery points (unless you are willing to never go above 60km/h) 3. The speed limits in navigation apps like Waze do not match the speed limits of Discovery. 4. Following on from point 2. above. If you are drive a trip that you expect to make regularly, there is actually an incentive to intentionally go over the speed limit. Since it is impossible to maintain any points anyway there is no point in trying however at the end of the trip the Discovery app tells you all of the places that you lost points included the speed that you were driving and the speed limit at that point. This means that at the end of the drive you will be able to reasonably piece together the speed limits for the whole route. But if the speed limit was faster than you were driving you will never know that you could have gone faster.

Recomendations: 1. The discovery app should warn you that you are speeding, isn't this the point to reduce accidents by correcting driving behavior rather than penalising people who do not even realise they are doing anything wrong. 2. Similar to the facebook messenger "chat heads" a circular notification could pop up with our current speed and the speed limit, this would keep it above any other navigation apps that we use but give us the relevant information in real time. 3. A voice prompt for speed limit changes or notification that we are speeding is anther option. 4. Perhaps discovery can recommend another application which has a similar feature, as I mentioned above Waze would be perfect but the Waze speed limits do not match up to the Discovery speed limits (and probably neither match up to the actual speed limit) 5. Finally even if Discovery cannot provide a live update on the speed limits, at least they should make a tool available for where we can look at the speed limits before the trip.

I am a careful driver and do not appreciate being told that I am speeding while at the same time being told that you cannot give me the speed limits to prevent this happening in the first place.

I sent an email on the matter, and would have waited for a response if the woman who answered the phone when I called (incidentally for something else) hadn't made me so angry when I brought this up. However needless to say I also need a response to my email.