Automated consumer to business electronic marketplace system

Abstract

An automated consumer to business electronic marketplace system is presented, wherein various aspects of user status, user behavior or operation of a vehicle associated with user are monitored and reported to an electronic marketplace. Suppliers of insurance products and other suppliers of automobile or personal products or services may offer users prices for products or services based on the data reported. The system may further allow the user to choose monitoring and reporting options based on discounts offered for certain reporting options.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part application of U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 825,967, filed Apr. 16, 2004, issuing Mar. 4, 2008 as U.S. Pat. No. 7,339,483 which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 463,380 filed Apr. 16, 2003, and is also a continuation-in-part application of U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 690,459, filed Oct. 20, 2003, now abandoned, which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 638,177, filed Aug. 11, 2000, now abandoned, each of which are incorporated by reference.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The present invention is related generally to a system and method for monitoring various types of information relating to the operation of vehicles, building systems, or monitoring of other personnel or environments, and reporting such information anonymously to an electronic marketplace. Based on said anonymous information, appropriate vehicle-related product and service offerings from selected suppli...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014]It is an object of the present invention to provide systems and methods for monitoring information about a vehicle's operation and driver status, such as usage of various equipment installed on the vehicle, frequency of hard-braking, high accelerations, ABS engagement, sudden swerves, tailgating, high-speed approaches to other vehicles, difficulty staying within lane, and the driver's state of alertness and / or attentiveness to the driving task.

Problems solved by technology

Insurance costs are generally a result of the characteristics of a vehicle, the vehicle's drivers and their driving histories.

These types of products offer significant potential for improving safety, but since there is no prior knowledge or assurance of how many such products will be utilized, it is difficult to justify offering vehicle insurance premium reductions for their purchase.

As such safety-related products only function at the driver's discretion, the utilization is difficult to assess.

A problem with such an operation is found in the requirement to have the relevant data captured and reported to the insurance company's central computers.

There are concerns about potential loss of privacy due to having such data captured and communicated to another party.

A further problem can exist if the owner decides not to surrender that type of information from time to time, or if other people are allowed to drive his vehicle who might object to having otherwise-private information about their location and driving habits captured and transmitted to the insurance company.

At present, even considering the existing methods and systems art, a problem remains in providing automotive insurance with premiums based in part on vehicle-operation related data captured by systems on the vehicle.

A vehicle's owner currently has no convenient way of selectively capturing data relating to operation of their vehicle, to identify potential savings in vehicle insurance premiums.

This is a smaller problem for premiums based solely on vehicle usage, since most drivers can estimate how much a vehicle is driven, where it is generally driven, and at what times. Such information can be provided via a web site or to a traditional agent, and estimated premiums calculated.

These types of information are easily identified and can be captured from existing ABS systems, collision warning systems, lane-keeping and road-departure warning systems, drowsy- and / or inattentive-driver monitoring systems, and the like, but such data are not generally available directly to the vehicle owner.

Further, the owner's or other driver's ability to estimate such data accurately is very unlikely.

For these reasons, the present art does not provide a convenient approach for capturing such relevant data and providing the vehicle owner with vehicle insurance alternatives based on the current vehicle's configuration.

Likewise, the present art does not provide a convenient approach for providing the vehicle owner with vehicle insurance alternatives based on the addition of various after market vehicle products capable of capturing vehicle-operation related information which may be reported to an insurance company for vehicle insurance premium discounts.

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