Did You Watch Tokyo Drift?

Car chases in movies are so extreme that some people mentally add up the cost of the wreckage. Progressive Direct, a unit of a U.S. auto insurer, has offered to do the math for you. It teamed up with Universal Studios Home Entertainment to insert a running tally of the destruction in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift."

That is the most awesome movie. I can remember my son and husband trying to calculate the cost of the tires. My husband almost cried at the waste of tires in that movie.

We didn’t know about the running total feature on the DVD. As cars smacked into one another, a display in a small window keeps track: "Roof repair: $209, taillights: $451, fender: $618.' The calculator is labeled "Progressive Direct: Insurance Damage Estimates." This is the first in what Universal hopes is a stream of branded interactive features for DVDs.

Can you image what that type of destruction would do to our insurance rates? The industry has changed. Now they can put running totals in DVDs, and they can offer an auto insurance quote over the internet.