The device for the man’s auto coverage program helped to prove that he could not have been the culprit.
A usage based insurance device used by a man in northeastern Ohio has helped to prove to the courts that he could not have been guilty of the suffocation death of his daughter, who was seven months old.
The man was acquitted in a Cleveland court partially because of the data in his UBI device.
Michael Beard, 28 years old, was acquitted by a jury of murder as well as other charges partially because of the data that had been collected by the monitoring device in his car for his usage based insurance coverage. He had been facing life in prison for the death of Lynniah Beard in May 2011.
The usage based insurance device recorded that Michael Beard had been using his vehicle around the time of the death.
The prosecutors had stated that the baby had been suffocated at 4:45 am. However, Michael Beard’s attorney used the data from the usage based insurance device in the Progressive Snapshot program and noted that Beard had arrived home at 4:44 am and turned off his car, but that he turned it back on again at 4:47 am.
According to Beard’s attorney, it was within those three minutes recorded by the usage based insurance device, that Beard had discovered that his daughter wasn’t breathing and had rushed back to his car with her in order to take her to the hospital.
Although Beard had entered into the usage based insurance program in order to help to show that he is a safe driver and, therefore, take advantage of certain discounts to his premiums, he could not have known that the data that was recorded by the required device – including the times at which the car was used, its mileage, and other driving behavior related data – could help to show that he could not have been present when his daughter had stopped being able to breathe, and that he had, in fact, been attempting to save her life that early morning two years ago.
