My automobile insurer has a program called Right Track, a device to help you get a discount –up to 30%– on your car insurance. It’s an app you install on your phone; using GPS, the company tracks your driving for three months. When they decide how much of a good driver discount you deserve, you can take the app off your phone.

At least that is what they said when I decided to try it.

It sounds creepy, I know. It feels like some dark figure somewhere is sitting in his cave (or in his basement in his underwear) spying on me, maybe accessing my personal data or establishing permanent spyware on my phone.

For someone my age, they are most interested in how I accelerate from a start, how I use my brake and my night-time driving. I thought this would be an easy gig. For one thing, I rarely drive at night and these days the nights are so long I am usually in bed before dark. I don’t peel out from a stopped position and I didn’t think there was any problem with how I used my brake.

I have been consistently getting bright, smiling faces and starry eyed emojis for my acceleration. That’s not surprising as I am purposely creeping forward in ways that previously would irritate the hell out of me if I was the car behind me. I hope that drivers behind me aren’t in a bad mood and don’t carry firearms.

Braking is another matter. As far as I can make out, this app would prefer I don’t use the brake at all. Just go so slow that I can roll to a stop when I need to.

I asked my student Alex, who is in drivers training, if she had been given any guidelines about braking and accelerating.

“Huh?” she asked.

“Are you told anything about how much time you should take to get to cruising speed or to come to a halt after you start braking?”

“Nah. You step on the gas to move and the brake to stop.”

Alex is much more forthcoming and specific when she tells me what words and gestures I should not employ as an adult to try to seem cool to kids.

“When adults do that, they look cringy.  That’s another word you shouldn’t use.”

But I digress. For every trip I make, the app gives a little report card telling me—with face emojis– how I am doing, how much money I am currently saving on my insurance and if I am trending up or down with that figure. When my braking had me trending down, I started paying close attention. It brought back memories of learning to drive with my dad in the front seat with me.

My dad never grabbed the dashboard and gasped like my mother did. He said things like, “Don’t take chances, look for opportunities.” “Drive ahead, watch two cars ahead of you.”

He read with amusement the Driver’s Guide that I was given for the driver’s education class I took in high school. “Implement your directional signal indicator,” he’d say with a snicker instead of “put your blinker on.” Then we’d pull over for ice cream.

His words come back to me now that I am creeping along like a 90 year-old woman afraid to go into traffic at the end of her driveway. My friend Kay, who is in Hospice, lives three miles from me. I’ve been visiting every day for the past month. Thanks to my new skills, I can almost get there with using my brake at all.

But you do not want to be behind me.