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Tech Watch: State Farm Releases New App To Improve Driving

(KCBS) - State Farm Insurance is launching a new app that it claims will help people become better drivers.

CNET Editor-at-Large Brian Cooley says you can load this on your iPhone and the app will measure how fast you're going, how you are cornering, how you are braking and it can also track your trip. It can give you a score on how safely you drove and also show hot spots on a map on where you were driving unsafely or safely based on vehicle dynamics, he adds. It can also be used as an efficiency gauge.

State Farm says the data remains with the user and is not collected or used by State Farm.

"But this is a funny time to bring out a product like this with all this talk about iPhone, Android, and Windows phone data collection...
there's a lingering concern," Cooley says.

In other tech car news, BMW is making it easier for people to stream music. The Pandora streaming music app is now available for your iPhone if you have a BMW made from March 2010. The Pandora application will show up on your dash, you'll see album covers and hear music streaming.

You can hear his Tech Watch report Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:50 P.M. on KCBS All News 740AM and 106.9FM.

(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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