What’s Your Score with OReGO?

October 27, 2015 | Tom Fuller

Watch my latest video on how I rate as a driver.

Okay, I’m being a little transparent here. I thought I was a really good driver. I don’t speed, I don’t tailgate (most of the time) and thought I was pretty smooth on the gas pedal and brake. So when OReGO vendor Azuga came out with their added feature of driver scoring, I thought: “no problem. I’ll do great.” Well, not so much.

Azuga is one of the account managers with OReGO. On my account page at Azuga I have a dashboard that shows me my overall score. Mine’s 89 out of 100. 89? That’s not even an A. If you look a little deeper you can see the problem.

On idling I get an 87; braking a paltry 80; on acceleration an 89; but on high speed I get a 100! Yeah! These stats come from the mileage reporting device (MRD) I plugged into my 2012 Prius. My engine reports a lot more information than I thought – and as I reviewed my score I discovered that’s it’s actually affecting my driving.

Digging deeper I clicked on the Trips tab and started seeing a pattern. In certain places I end up braking pretty hard. In one particular case it was when I was turning from River Road NE to Quinaby Road NE in Marion County. The turn is more than 45 degrees and I think I just didn’t anticipate it. So what, you say. Well, smooth braking helps with gas mileage, brake pad wear, and general overall smoothness of driving. Over time I’ve been watching my braking patterns and I see improvement.

I’ve also looked at my acceleration score and I’m trying not to put the pedal to the metal as much. Idling I don’t have as much control over. When you are at a stoplight the Prius shuts off the engine, but it doesn’t end the trip. So even though I’m not actually idling, my MRD thinks I am. I’m sure at some point the technology will catch up to this so for now I’m kind of ignoring that statistic.

Driver scoring is just one of the cool things available to you at no extra cost for being an OReGO participant. You can also get a reading on your battery voltage, and your engine health. You can set up “safe zones” and get an email if your vehicle travels into or out of the zone. You can earn badges and log your trips. Here’s a blog post I did on some of the things available as an OReGO participant with Azuga.

Want to know more? Check out our vendor options page to learn what each account manager has to offer. We’d love for you to join us in test-driving OReGO and be a pioneer of what could be the future of helping maintain our roads and bridges.