System and method for vehicle sensing and analysis

A method for monitoring vehicle motion using a mobile device associated with a user, comprising:

• at an application executing on the mobile device in an idle state, detecting that the user has breached a first geofence using at least one of a motion sensor and a location sensor of the mobile device, wherein the first geofence defines a first origin and a first radius, wherein the application is operable between the idle state, an in-detection state, and a drive state;
• transitioning the application into the in-detection state in response to detecting that the user has breached the first geofence;
• determining, at the application in the in-detection state, that the user is in a driving activity state based on a user activity model;
• transitioning the application into the drive state at a time point in response to determining that the user is in the driving activity state, wherein the drive state comprises:
• collecting a movement dataset using at least one of the motion sensor and the location sensor,
• analyzing the movement dataset to generate a set of vehicle movement characteristics;
• and
• transmitting the set of vehicle movement characteristics to a database and storing the set of vehicle movement characteristics in association with the user and the time point.