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What kind of data is my new car collecting?

theglobeandmail.com

121–130 of 210 posts

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that depends on country. For example the UK has no public road (that I'm aware of) where a speed of higher than 70mph is allowed, so that would be an easy initial rule. Where there are dynamic speed limits in place, it would be plausible to report back possibles (car location and speed) which could then be checked against a central database which was more accurate. I'm not suggesting that such a system is a g…

In the US this sort of detection is privatized - by insurance companies lowering your rates if you run their app which beans your location, speed, and motion/fitness data to their servers. At least for Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount.

>Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount.

The really stupid thing about this is that driving 80+ and the occasional hard braking is just normal traffic condition on some roads at some hours. Penalizing people for needing to use those roads at those times and acting like every other normal human around them when doing so defeats the point of insurance.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#122

One thing that's interesting to me is, modern cars know (relatively accurately) whether you're speeding or not. They have GPS and a database of speed limits. Also depending on what's in the car, they may know who was driving it. How long before a speed safety campaign starts arguing that car manufacturers should be handing over information about people breaking the law in their cars to law enforcement...

At least in my 2019 Subaru, that DB is already badly out of date for my area. Amusingly, it's all on the high side - 80 for a 75 zone, and 45 for a 35 zone. It's also usually late in registering the switches, by a good quarter mile in some cases.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#123
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not legal advice, and you should consult an attorney if you believe that an OEM may come after you for tampering with your own vehicle. That said, I believe that there is very limited legal recourse for a vehicle OEM who wants to prevent an end user from changing the data collection and upload features of their vehicles. The worst thing would be potentially voiding the warranty, but for 10-15 year old used ve…

Don't forget that Tesla is now in this space, and turning off Tesla's access to it will turn off your car, period. I have a hard time believing that others in the industry will not take the blase reaction to this and then do it themselves.

> Don't forget that Tesla is now in this space, and turning off Tesla's access to it will turn off your car, period.

Which is super scary. A couple years ago one of their firmware engineers had his NDA expire, and he posted some stories about his time there in some forum.

One of the stories that stuck with me is they were really sloppy with their updates. One time the pushed one that wasn't fully cooked (it might have bricked some, I can't remember), so one of the engineers literally wrote a script to SSH into each of the cars to roll back part of the update.

Update: here's the original source: https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#124
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not legal advice, and you should consult an attorney if you believe that an OEM may come after you for tampering with your own vehicle. That said, I believe that there is very limited legal recourse for a vehicle OEM who wants to prevent an end user from changing the data collection and upload features of their vehicles. The worst thing would be potentially voiding the warranty, but for 10-15 year old used ve…

Don't forget that Tesla is now in this space, and turning off Tesla's access to it will turn off your car, period. I have a hard time believing that others in the industry will not take the blase reaction to this and then do it themselves.

Hopefully the rest of the industry follows Tesla and makes paid car DLC and constant updates. /S

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#125
post #42

> A car camera for Affectiva, a company that is developing technology for measuring driver emotions, in Boston, on Oct. 6, 2018. No. Just no. Why would anyone allow collecting this kind of information? There is no way it can't (so, won't) be used against you. Everyone gets angry from time to time.

You could join the data to billboard locations and sell it to advertisers who want to know what kind of emotional impact their highway campaigns are having.

IMO, that's still using the data against our (the driver's) best interests.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#126
post #29

One thing that's interesting to me is, modern cars know (relatively accurately) whether you're speeding or not. They have GPS and a database of speed limits. Also depending on what's in the car, they may know who was driving it. How long before a speed safety campaign starts arguing that car manufacturers should be handing over information about people breaking the law in their cars to law enforcement...

I also suspect that in the near future insurance companies will demand higher premiums from drivers who commute on more "dangerous" roads (i.e. roads on which statistically speaking more accidents happen). The companies already have easy-enough access to most of the drivers' GPS data, they certainly do know the GPS locations of most of today's accidents (via Waze-like services), I'm surprised why they haven't already…

>I'm surprised why they haven't already started implementing this.

I would be completely unsurprised if they've run the numbers and determined that penalizing entire zip codes is far more lucrative.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#127
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good reliable cars are currently cheaper than ever. Of all the problems stacked against the poor, I'm not sure that cars have become less obtainable. Adjusted for inflation, the cheapest economy cars are quite inexpensive, and generally speaking, they last much longer than they did 20-30 years ago.

That's the opposite sentiment that I've heard recently (from an American perspective). My understanding is that our used cars are more expensive than ever due to: a) Certified pre-owned and similar programs making some used cars more appealing (and thus more valuable), removing them from the supply of unvetted, cheap used cars. b) More folks being able to afford used cars around the world. It seems like at the lower…

The market was disrupted a decade back by cash for clunkers, which took lots of cars off the road. That raised prices and forced banks to write loans for older cars.

At the same time, emissions controls changed the market in that cars are more governed by use not age. I mostly buy Hondas and know the market a bit, and they are all good for about 200,000 miles without significant maintenance.

I sold a 2003 Honda Pilot with 250k miles for $2,500 last year -- really high considering all of the stuff that will break on a car of that vintage. In the 90's, that pricepoint would be for a much younger car. A place like CarMax will sell a 2010 Pilot with low mileage for $15k, which works because the TCO works out -- you won't have lots of maintenance.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#128
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why can I not gut my catalytic converter & change some programming so my car says the outputs are fine? Because the state wants me to get rid of my old functional car to support the economy of newer more expensive vehicles. ...also probably to protect the environment?

tHe sTaTE wAnTs tO cOnTroL me!!!! modifies car to literally emit noxious emissions everywhere

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#129
post #12

> “There’s just massive amounts of data being collected, and if you want the service, you have to agree to it. And people do agree to it, and they have relatively little control over things,” Scassa says. I'm curious what this will do to the used car market in 10-15 years. Say the original owner consented to all this data tracking. They go to sell the car to buy a new one, and the 2nd owner does not agree to the trac…

Seems to me answering those questions will be part of a greater process to balance power and interests between manufacturers and consumers/users. E.g., Tesla already seems to try and decide the questions in the way manufacturers would likely have them, i.e. suppressing data transmission is tampering and the problem of car reselling doesn't apply as cars cannot be resold anymore without manufacturer involvement. I thi…

It will be interesting to see how this collides with California's new CCPA.

Re: What kind of data is my new car collecting?

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the used car market will get destroyed. In a few years buying a used car older than a few years will probably be a quaint memory. That is unless manufacturers will get forced to open up their systems by law.

I think the move to electric vehicles will actually collapse the second-hand car market - no-one wants to buy a car with batteries that no longer hold enough charge to complete a journey. We already see this effect with used laptops and smartphones, however I can never see changing your cars battery pack being a end-user activity.

If batteries get commoditized then it could be an easy process to replace the battery. It becomes no different than many other repairs you would typically make to make a used car sellable.

However it will likely require legislation to ensure there's no DRM bullshit in the battery packs.

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