State Farm Patents Wearable Device System That Could Poke Drowsy Or Distracted Drivers

Unfortunately, we don’t all carry little elves on our person who can administer a hefty poke when we need to snap to attention. State Farm is working on a way to solve that issue with a patent for a wearable device system that can alert drivers who might be nodding off, distracted, or intoxicated behind the wheel.

The insurance company has dreamed up a wearable computing device capable of alerting drivers with a physical nudge or maybe a vibration, if the person is showing signs of being ill-prepared to drive, the Chicago Tribune reports.

The system could also take a look at patterns in your trips over time and then make suggestions, like “drinking a caffeinated beverage shortly before operating the vehicle at high impairment times,” the patent said.

Users would receive information and alerts through smart watches, wireless headsets, computer-enhanced glasses or clothing. The patent lays out a system of optic sensors to catch things like nodding heads and how long it’s taking you between blinks, which would then be used to calculate a drowsiness score.

“As our industry and the needs of our customers continue to change, State Farm strives to be a leading innovator within the insurance marketplace,” a spokeswoman told the Tribune. “As part of this process, it’s important that State Farm protects its ideas through patent filings, and the patent process allows us to further research ideas to determine how we can better serve our customers, as well as improve vehicle safety.”

She declined to comment on whether information collected by the devices, like the drowsiness score, would factor into customers’ insurance rates.

While State Farm and others in the insurance world are looking into such technology, it’s not like the industry is the first to venture into wearable territory, which is also a somewhat murky territory when it comes to privacy concerns. An insurer tracking drivers’ physiology could be a tough row to hoe.

“While no one is against making distracted driving less frequent, State Farm has its work cut out for it getting its policyholders to accept sensors that collect very personal — physical and physiological — data,” Donald Light, director of the North America property and casualty insurance practice of financial technology consulting firm Celent told the Tribune.

State Farm patents product that could poke drowsy drivers [Chicago Tribune]

American Airlines Ditching Confusing 24-Hour Hold Policy For 24-Hour Cancellation Option

Federal airline regulations require that carriers must either give most passengers a 24-hour window to cancel tickets without penalty, or allow travelers to put tickets on hold for 24 hours before being charged the airfare. Of all major U.S. carriers, American Airlines is the only one that doesn’t offer the cancellation option, resulting in costly confusion for some travelers. But AA says it is ditching that policy and will begin offering the 24-hour cancellation window instead.

American chose to change its policy on 24-hour holds after passengers continually called the airline confused about why they were unable to cancel their flights within 24 hours of purchase, The Washington Post reports.

According to the Department of Transportation’s regulations, as long as a customer books a non-refundable ticket at least seven days ahead of the scheduled departure, an airline is required to offer one of two options: allow that customer to change or cancel the trip within 24 hours without penalty, or hold that reservation at the current price for 24 hours without payment.

Unlike nearly all the other domestic airlines, American subscribed to the Department of Transportation’s 24-hour hold guideline, and that proved to be confusing for many travelers.

“Up until now, we’ve done it a little differently than other airlines,” Josh Freed, a spokesperson for American, tells the Post. “Reasonably enough, people assumed the policies were the same.”

The airline says it will phase out the 24-hour hold, but that travelers booking flights through its website can still use the option for now. Additionally, passengers using reward miles to book flights will still be able to use the 24-hour hold for the foreseeable future.

Last year, Consumerist reported on one passenger’s run-in with the sometimes confusing rule. Reader “B” discovered the policy the hard way after booking and trying to cancel a flight on American Airlines within that 24-hour period.

While part of the confusion came because the airline followed the lesser 24-hour policy, it also involved American’s display of the option: the “hold reservation” selection is included with other payment options, like “Credit/Debit Card,” and “PayPal.”

“I wouldn’t normally consider a ‘hold’ a payment option,” B. told Consumerist at the time, “and given its credit card-like symbol and location on the far right I just ignored it like I would ignore a specialized type of credit card that I didn’t have.”

In the end, B. filed a complaint with customer relations and was refunded for his ticket.

Here’s a full (updated) list of airlines’ 24-hour hold/refund policies:

Domestic Airlines:

AIRLINE	24-HOUR HOLD?	24-HOUR CANCEL?	POLICY DETAILS
Alaska Airlines	N	Y	24-hour free cancellation
Allegiant Airlines	N	Y	24-hour free cancellation
American Airlines	Y N	N Y	UPDATED: American will phase out the option of 24-hour hold, making the switch to 24-hour free cancellation.
Delta Air Lines	N	Y	Provides a full refund if cancellation is made by midnight the day after purchase of most flights
Frontier Airlines	N	Y	24-hour free cancellation
JetBlue	N	Y	24-hour free cancellation
Southwest Airlines	N	Y	No fee for cancellation, customers receive full credit toward future flight
Spirit Airlines	N	Y	24-hour free cancellation
United Airlines	N	Y	24-hour free cancellation

American Airlines will no longer let travelers hold flight reservations for 24 hours [The Washington Post]

University Backtracks On Company-Funded Study Claiming Chocolate Milk Could Treat Concussions

Earlier this year, public health advocates criticized a University of Maryland research program for taking money from a beverage company and then claiming in a press release — with no reviewable data to back up its assertions — that this company’s chocolate milk product could improve cognitive skills of athletes who’d suffered concussions. Today, the university is admitting that maybe this was not the brightest idea.

Just a quick catch-up for those who missed the previous story. There’s a program called Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) that teams up state school researchers with local companies. In Dec. 2015, MIPS sent out a press release claiming that a new brand of chocolate milk “helped high school football players improve their cognitive and motor function over the course of a season, even after experiencing concussions.”

Scientists and public health advocates reviewed the press release and shredded MIPS for putting out a largely fact-free, “boastful release touting vague neurological benefits of a specific chocolate milk.”

For example, while MIPS researchers used a cognitive function test with 36 different measurements, the release failed to specify which of these metrics actually showed improvement.

And instead of releasing the study or publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal, MIPS only made the press release public. A number of organizations — including Consumerist — asked to see the study on which the release was based, but MIPS declined to make it available.

But even though the researchers weren’t willing to share their actual study, they had no problem using it to market this product. The press release even included a statement from a local school superintendent who declared, “Now that we understand the findings of this study, we are determined to provide [the chocolate milk] to all of our athletes.”

In response to the criticism, the University quietly formed an ad-hoc review committee to investigate whether anything inappropriate had occurred. That committee has now released its findings [PDF] and though it found no wrongdoing on the part of the beverage company that sponsored the study, MIPS is nonetheless returning the full $228,910 in funding that it received from these backers, “out of an abundance of caution and to remove any perception of conflict of interest.”

In touting the chocolate milk — whose brand name we won’t mention — the lead researcher on the study actually included endorsements in company press releases, saying “Our data suggest that athletes may be ready faster and better for the next game or practice if they drink [this brand of] chocolate milk.”

The school’s review committee found such quotes “troubling,” even if they did not violate any written University policy.

“[I]t is surprising that a tenured faculty member would think that product endorsement is appropriate,” writes the committee in its findings.

The committee also criticized this study for not being an attempt to improve or develop a product, but to validate a specific brand. In fact, in applying for the MIPS program, the beverage company explicitly stated its intentions when it wrote that “Having research underway at the University of Maryland gives our business and its product credibility.”

Moreover, the committee raises the question of why the study tested this chocolate milk brand only against brands recommended by the sponsoring company.

Internal review during the study itself questioned why the lead researcher — a biomechanics expert — was in charge of this study, as he did “not have any experience in nutritional/supplementation research.” Likewise, the project itself was “missing numerous elements that would make this effective in concluding anything that would be useful to the company or to the state of the literature.”
The committee concluded that the project “appears more like a service agreement than research aimed at generating and disseminating new knowledge” and that there were “simply too many uncontrolled variables to produce meaningful scientific results.”

As part of the committee recommendations, MIPS has scrubbed the relevant press releases from its website, though thankfully there’s the Wayback Machine to retain this embarrassment for posterity.

Additionally, the committee recommends that no press release should include even a preliminary conclusion until after the data has been peer-reviewed and, under most circumstances, accepted for publication.

“We have already begun work with our conflict of interest committee to make appropriate changes to conflict of interest policies and training programs for all applicable research and administrative personnel,” says the University in a statement. “While we have every reason to believe this was an isolated incident, any deviations from accepted practices in the responsible conduct of research cannot be tolerated. Any potential sanctions against faculty or staff involved in this matter would be considered, by policy, confidential personnel matters.”

Company Sells $25K Worth Of Windows With Lifetime Warranty, Disappears

The trouble with “lifetime” warranties is that they often leave out an important detail: whose lifetime? That’s what a homeowner in California wonders now that her windows are bending away from them frame and generally failing at being windows. Now she can’t find the company that installed $25,000 worth of windows in her home only 9 years ago, or the company that actually manufactured the windows.

The homeowner did what people in Sacramento traditionally do in this situation: she called consumer reporter Kurtis Ming at the local CBS affiliate. She wondered what she should do now that her windows were bending, and the “lifetime” warranty was a big selling point when she had them installed.

The company promised to stand behind the windows as long as she owns or lives in her home, but the contact information that she had for the manufacturer, Superior Engineered Products, led nowhere.

In her case, there was good news. The company that installed her windows had gone out of business, but the manufacturer actually didn’t. They had merged with another window company, and the new owners were actually honoring warranties… or at least said that they were when a local news station came calling.

Should you just ignore

Call Kurtis: Where’s The Company That Offered Lifetime Warranty On My $25,000 Windows? [CBS Sacramento]

The Bidding War Is Over: China’s Anbang Insurance Drops Pursuit Of Starwood Hotels

Just three weeks after crashing Marriott’s party and throwing billions of dollars in the ring to take over Starwood Hotels — the operator of brands like Sheraton, St. Regis, Westin, and W — China’s Anbang Insurance Group packed up its bids and decided to go home, leaving Marriott and its $13.25 billion to be crowned the merger winner. 

Three days after Anbang once again trumped Marriott’s offer,  Starwood announced the consortium would formally withdraw its $14 billion takeover offer for the hotel chain.

It’s unclear exactly what led Anbang to step back from its desire for Starwood, the New York Times reports.

The consortium issued a statement Thursday that simply blamed unspecified “various market considerations” for the decision.

Following Anbang’s decision to back out of its bid, Starwood said its board of directors continued to unanimously support the existing merger with Marriott to create the largest hotelier in the world.

“We continue to be very excited about the combination of our two companies and are committed to completing this deal in an expeditious manner,” Bruce Duncan, Chairman of Starwood’s Board, said in a statement.

As it stands, Marriott’s deal to buy Starwood is valued at $13.25 billion, with $9.7 billion coming from Marriott stock and $3.6 billion from cash.

Marriott first agreed to purchase Starwood for $12 billion in November 2015 in a bid to create the world’s largest hotelier.

That deal was put into doubt five months later when it received an unsolicited takeover bid of roughly $13.2 billion from Anbang. Days later, Marriott came back with a $13.6 billion deal, that Starwood again agreed to.

While relatively unknown in the U.S., the company previously purchased Hilton’s flagship Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan for $1.95 billion in Oct. 2014. More recently, Anbang acquired the Strategic Hotels & Resorts portfolio, which includes luxury properties under the Loews, Fairmont, InterContinental, and Four Seasons brands.

Starwood Bidding War Ends Abruptly, Yielding a Merger and a Puzzle [The New York Times]

Not A Joke: Krispy Kreme Offering Customers A Free Doughnut Today

While we’re used to companies trying to slip in an April Fools’ Day story and have it reported as real on this day every year, Krispy Kreme is taking another tack. See, it really is offering customers a free doughnut today, but the reason for doing so is still of the “Hardy har har, I see what you did there,” variety.

This year’s doughnut harvest was um, especially plentiful, so there are extra doughnuts that need eating, Krispy Kreme explains, ostensibly while trying to keep a straight face.

“The Doughnut Harvest yields hundreds of thousands of bushels of doughnettes — each one carefully nurtured from a doughnut seedling, then individually selected by our master doughnut growers at the peak of freshness—which are then brought into our shops for final glazing or hand-decorating,” the company said in a release.

“This year, on account of the unusually fair winter, the Doughnut Harvest was especially bountiful,” the chain said, which is where you come in. “Now, for the first time, the surplus is so great we are inviting guests everywhere to join us in celebration.”

To help with this doughnut overload, customers can come in today, April 1, and receive one free glazed original doughnut. While you’re there, you can “experience first-hand the harvest tradition which, until this year, was a celebration reserved only for growers and their families.”

Right, we get it, a doughnut harvest, what a joke! Doughnuts don’t grow in the ground! As far as we know, there’s no requirement to laugh at the chain’s humor in order to get the deal, so again, free doughnuts are up for grabs. There is a list of locations that are not participating today, so you should check that here before you go.

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

Here are nine of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.