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To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

money.com

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Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#151

Post by Robotbeat »

henry2023 wrote: post #121
KennyBlanken wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes. 26% of road funds come from gas taxes; 11 percent from tolls, another 25% from the federal government: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative... Now, about those "paying their fair share of 25% of the cost of the roads" gas taxes: In Utah, the gas tax was $0.245 in 1997. Today it's $0.34, when adjusting for inf…

>> Does Utah give people with small 3000lb gas cars a tax break, and penalize 5,000lb pickup truck owners? Yes, if your car has less weight you use less gas and therefore have a “tax break” compared to the guy on the 5,000lb truck. >> EVs start to get popular and suddenly now everyone's very concerned about...road wear? Would it be better to ignore the problem?

Yes, in the near term it absolutely would because we need to decarbonize transport. Or put another way, fuel taxes are an impromptu way of taxing the huge externalities of ICE vehicles in terms of carbon emissions and exhaust, and unless those taxes are increased, adding special EV-only fees and taxes (which many states already have at much higher rates than the state fuel tax) will actually do the opposite, effectively negating this taxation of externalities that already exists.

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#152

Post by frankfrankfrank »

Analemma_ wrote: post #44
mholt wrote: post #6

Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas. So they have a "deal" for EV drivers: pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than other vehicles) or install an OBD device in your car and carry a surveillance app to be charged for how much your vehicle is driven [0]. The measurement route requires 2 separate accounts with 3rd parties, one of which has your payment information on file. Given…

WA state is also ridiculous about this: I can understand a road usage tax to replace the gas tax we're not paying, but they also charge an additional fee on top of that for a state fund to add more EV charging stations, even though logically it should be ICE drivers who are paying this to help incentivize the transition! People who already bought EVs clearly aren't concerned with the number of charging stations which…

It strikes me just how detached and ignorant your perspective is, largely not because it bothers me that people like you exist, but how it seems practically impossible for such detached and decadent perspectives to proliferate without collapse being imminent.

So you, member of the spoiled rotten, pilfering upper strata, parasitizing the larger society while at the same time degenerating it, want the regular people you are living off in decadence, to also pay not just current rates, but even higher rates so you can see your utopian, egotist, narcissistic vision come to fruition?

You want people who can’t afford the luxury of EVs and who are already being destroyed and pillaged by the likes of your strata, to on top of that abuse, also pay more?

Do you want them to also just eat cake? Or perhaps maybe they should also just try being billionaires? Just stop being poor, people. Right?

It’s unfortunate that humans seem to have made essentially zero progress in preventing what has been captured in numerous stories. Possibly the most relevant one being that Hubris is struck down by Nemesis; the origins of those two words themselves, something most people do not even realize.

If you ever have the chance, there is an excellent statue of Hubris in the Louvre. It is a bit hidden and tucked away, which makes it all the more prescient. Note when it was created.

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#153

Post by louwrentius »

otter-in-a-suit wrote: post #137

I've both worked on systems like that professionally and built some myself just for fun to play with GPS/geospatial data/streaming etc (fun tech). I'd _never_ want something like that installed in my vehicle. First off, you're usually relying on ODB-2 + GPS + usually some type of streaming backend, which means you're looking at 2 unreliable (or, at least, hard to _interpret_) sources of data delivered and presumably…

How is this different from the phone in your pocket?

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#154

Post by alkonaut »

mholt wrote: post #6

Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas. So they have a "deal" for EV drivers: pay an exorbitant registration fee (hundreds more than other vehicles) or install an OBD device in your car and carry a surveillance app to be charged for how much your vehicle is driven [0]. The measurement route requires 2 separate accounts with 3rd parties, one of which has your payment information on file. Given…

Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel. How soon that switch is made just depends on how long you want gas car drivers to subsidize the roads for EV drivers. I think most would agree that the time to stop that subsidizing is "not yet".

Why you would need to track how much a vehicle is driven I don't understand though. Unless you want to measure how far it's driven within some geographical area (such as a state) and can't merely charge for the total distance driven, but that seems unnecessarily complex, given that a car will only be registered in one region and it should balance out across state borders.

So at the anual/biannual mandatory inspections (which make a lot more sense to add if they aren't already mandatory, than any tracking!) just check the distance driven and charge road tax accordingly. I pay around $800/year for road tax for my car. And $8/gallon for the fuel. But I do get great roads for it.

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#155

Post by tomohawk »

Robotbeat wrote: post #146
tomohawk wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of that, they could mandate meters on the charging stations that add a surcharge to the electricity. That would be less invasive, and be analogous to how they collect usage fees by taxing gas. There is a general legal principle that the state must use the least intrusive means to accomplish a goal. A lawsuit might force a change.

Except you can charge from every single outlet.

Sounds like tax evasion.

You still need a charger/adapter between the outlet and the vehicle. Perhaps build the meter into the vehicles charging port.

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#156

Post by iisan7 »

13of40 wrote: post #113
KennyBlanken wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds to me like the system is working exactly as it should.

It's kind of funny, because from my perspective I'm an old man who learned himself a trade decades ago and worked things right to the point that I don't have to drive around a shit-box anymore, but to you I'm a privileged asshole. Which one is the truth?

It's just part of the cost of ownership. Not classy to balk about a few hundred bucks more to register your car when you've paid tens of thousands for it, and are also paying more to insure it, and to maintain it, and in depreciation. Presumably you anticipated all that in the purchase as part of the TCO. Not to mention, the tradition of wealthier persons contributing more to society stretches back in Western civ to the Roman period at least. Better IMO to take some pride in your attainment of some small aspect of patrician status rather than resentment at the responsibilities that come with it.

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#157

Post by otter-in-a-suit »

louwrentius wrote: post #153
otter-in-a-suit wrote: post #137

I've both worked on systems like that professionally and built some myself just for fun to play with GPS/geospatial data/streaming etc (fun tech). I'd _never_ want something like that installed in my vehicle. First off, you're usually relying on ODB-2 + GPS + usually some type of streaming backend, which means you're looking at 2 unreliable (or, at least, hard to _interpret_) sources of data delivered and presumably…

How is this different from the phone in your pocket?

The biggest difference is that using something non-privacy-conscious (like Google Maps) doesn't have an immediate impact on my insurance bills. It also doesn't have access to my ODB-2 data and I can turn it off.

iOS allows me to set relatively fine-grained permissions and privacy settings. Unless I actively use Google Maps (or any other GPS enabled app), it won't be able to report my location data.

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#158

Post by mikro2nd »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #45
don-code wrote: post #25

How do these apps work, in practice? The article states: > If you’re at the wheel focused on the road, but someone in the passenger seat is changing the music on your phone, the app may think it’s observing distracted driving and count it against you. Is the app running on the car, or on the user's phone, which somehow detects that the user is driving a car? Is there some way that a paired phone (Bluetooth - or maybe…

State Farm sends a Bluetooth beacon that you pair with your phone. Each car gets a beacon. Whichever beacon is closest is the car you’re in. The app on the phone uses gps and accelerometer data to determine driving behavior. Presumably the stream of data is sent to the insurance company at some point.

And if you don't have a phone?

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#159

Post by stravant »

louwrentius wrote: post #153
otter-in-a-suit wrote: post #137

I've both worked on systems like that professionally and built some myself just for fun to play with GPS/geospatial data/streaming etc (fun tech). I'd _never_ want something like that installed in my vehicle. First off, you're usually relying on ODB-2 + GPS + usually some type of streaming backend, which means you're looking at 2 unreliable (or, at least, hard to _interpret_) sources of data delivered and presumably…

How is this different from the phone in your pocket?

Value proposition. What are you going to do, _not_ walk around with a phone in your pocket?

Re: To save money on insurance, drivers agree to intrusive monitoring technology

#160

Post by mschuster91 »

danielheath wrote: post #147
Gordonjcp wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you linked to a fictional news site, right?

Terrible source, yes, but it happens to be at least roughly on point in this instance; if my dim recall of the relevant engineering is correct, road damage grows quadratically to the pressure exerted on the road by tires, and EVs are typically nearly twice as heavy as ICE vehicles.

> and EVs are typically nearly twice as heavy as ICE vehicles.

A 3-series BMW clocks in at 1700-2255 kg. A comparable Tesla Model Y clocks in at 1778-2003 kg (from empty to fully loaded).

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