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Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

arstechnica.com

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Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#131

Post by BalinKing »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #106
skeeter2020 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just float "won't someone think of the children?"

Why wouldn’t I think of children? Isn’t one of the most common ruminations of modern society that children cannot roam freely due to excess risk of being hurt or killed by a distracted driver? https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/these-vehicles-may-pose... >IIHS says pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80% since hitting their low in 2009. The statistics show that 2021 was almost as deadly to people on foot as last yea…

> Airline pilots get recorded, why shouldn’t drivers?

AFAIK, general aviation pilots are not recorded. Black boxes are only a thing in commercial aviation, so a more appropriate analogy would be the recording of bus or semi-truck drivers.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#132

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #106
skeeter2020 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just float "won't someone think of the children?"

Why wouldn’t I think of children? Isn’t one of the most common ruminations of modern society that children cannot roam freely due to excess risk of being hurt or killed by a distracted driver? https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/these-vehicles-may-pose... >IIHS says pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80% since hitting their low in 2009. The statistics show that 2021 was almost as deadly to people on foot as last yea…

>> "won't someone think of the children?"

> Why wouldn’t I think of children?

The g-parent describes a narrative that is designed to seed an untrue notion that no one is thinking of the children.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#133

Post by reaperducer »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #39
Scoundreller wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once insurance companies can charge perfect premiums, there will be no point in buying insurance at all.

Time for a credit union version of insurance coverage.

This already exists. I believe State Farm is one of them.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#134

Post by nucleogenesis »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68
throw5959 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, how? Why would someone have a vehicle with someone else's internet connected camera inside?

Why would society not mandate cameras to make sure the operators of thousands of kilograms of metal at high speeds are paying attention to the road instead of their phone? And to be able to punish them if they are not. Assuming pedestrian and children’s safety is a priority.

> Assuming pedestrian and children’s safety is a priority.

It really isn’t a priority (in the US anyhow) otherwise we’d have far more and far better public transportation.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#135

Post by throw5959 »

weaksauce wrote: post #75
throw5959 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, I honestly don't think it's hard to determine that from the data.

what data? if i let a passenger use my phone to check something while i’m driving this will negatively impact me.

The phone usage data. You use a phone very differently when you're driving and when you're a passenger.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#136

Post by _DeadFred_ »

r00fus wrote: post #115
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how all the tech bro mass management of people systems work. Do away with any customer service, throw away randos impacted by any situations outside the norm because your system is large enough to keep the needed critical mass even without those people. Scale over nuanced edge cases to minimize cost/friction/complexity. The future world will become more and more brittle/brutal for us randos because we are 100…

Plot twist: at some point in our lives we're all in the "randos" group. So these policies are default inhumane to some portion of the populace all the time.

That's the fun part.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#137

Post by s1artibartfast »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #70
ceejayoz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... they don't have money to invest without the insurance premiums coming in. My family finances look a lot worse if you exclude interest and investment proceeds at random from the analysis, too. $10-20B profit annually is not something I'd describe as "in the hole". The "hole" is overflowing with money.

If you keep selling a product for $95 that costs you $100 to deliver you will be "in the hole" on that product line. For Allstate, that product line is insurance. If you invest that $95, get a $15 dollar return, and then deliver the $100 product, you have made a net profit even though you sold the product for below cost. You are still in the hole for the insurance product no matter how you slice it. Yes, I get that t…

is it really a float? Im not an accountant, but when I think of float, I think of the balance in an account that regularly clears.

Is it analogous to interest in household checking account where income = bills, or is it analogous to the same household with a large retirement account that sweeps the checking and pays bills.

Maybe another way of asking this is whats the relative size of the interest bearing investments to the annual premium collection.

Can you show me where this is listed in the allstate financial results?

https://www.allstateinvestors.com/static-files/d61a8007-647a...

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#138

Post by sisk »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #116

Are these apps able to track location and accelerometer data from the background? Or does this only apply to people who open something like GasBuddy while driving the car?

For GasBuddy, specifically, it was used for an opt-in feature known as "Trips" whose purpose was to show you driving insights such as those mentioned in the article (hard braking, hard turning, hard acceleration). Not enabled by default and looks to have been removed at some point.

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#139

Post by dghlsakjg »

caminante wrote: post #94
dghlsakjg wrote: post #14

This is your friendly reminder that the insurance industry does not generally make money on underwriting. In other words they are losing money on insuring you. Typically the costs of the insurance side of the business are greater than their revenue from premiums. This typically means that insurance actually is a good deal on net. They make their money on investing the float. They can only do that if they attract prem…

Generally agree about InsuranceCos, but I don't think your claim is true about profitability of core insurance operations. Their combined ratios (insurance payouts + expenses / premiums collected) are closely tracked by investors and if they're creeping up to 100% without a systemic reason that affects all InsuranceCos, they get a lot of scrutiny. Here's just one lens [0] for home insurance going back to 2004 (~20 ye…

> Here's just one lens [0] for home insurance going back to 2004 (~20 years). It appears that the combined ratios were under 100% for ~8 years.

For the other 12 years they were over. 60% of the years were losses.

The average is 101.535 for all years in your source. So over 20 years their costs were $101.53 for every $100 in premiums collected.

I didn't say that they ALWAYS post losses, I said that it is very common, and that insurance premiums are a net money loser for the industry.

This is just another source proving that out, unless I'm missing something?

Re: Allstate used GasBuddy and other apps to track driving behavior: lawsuit

#140

Post by stackedinserter »

drawkward wrote: post #104

All mandatory insurance is a subsidy to private shareholders; it should not exist as is. If insurance is legally required, it should also be legally required to be non-profit and government run.

It is government run in some Canadian provinces, and still sucks.
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