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

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

#201
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Roads are a public good. Having a road available to use, is worth almost as much as actually using it. Not to mention all the positive externalities of a better connected country (more trade, business, economic growth).

I use a road in my 1100kg car, you use it in your 2200kg car. You cause 8 times the damage. Do you generate 8 times the positive externalities?

Yes?

The positive externalities created by trucks shipping food into cities massively outweigh almost all passenger traffic.

So charging by weight/road damage makes no sense.

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

#202
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EV drivers more than make this up by not having nearly as many externalities (pollution) as gas drivers. Gas drivers seem to always conveniently forget those real societal costs when they're trying to talk about "fairness".

That still doesn't pay for roads. I love EVs and think their use should be more broadly encouraged, but the gas tax made for a very simple use tax and it's not obvious how one would replace it to do the same thing for EVs. Simply saying EVs are so much better for the environment that they don't need to pay for roads at all seems a little short sighted.

>it's not obvious how one would replace it to do the same thing for EVs.

Taxing tires would work. Also, mileage is already recorded during vehicle inspections. That could be used to calculate tax but would be more open to fraud.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it dubious that people who get good scores on these telematics are actually better drivers or less likely to cause accidents. I've been stuck behind people doing 40 mph on the entrance ramp trying to merge into a 70 mph interstate. It's terrifying. They get a great rating for their leisurely acceleration, while vehicles on the interstate have to slam on their brakes and swerve to avoid them.

I am also skeptical of the accuracy of the initial rules but this seems like a domain that should be fairly easy to refine with a large enough corpus of data. Once an insurance company has a sufficient number of claims from telematics users I would wager that they will be able to find strong signals in the telematics data to identify customers who are likely to be expensive.

It's impossible to tell if someone is driving properly based on just sensor data because if it were, we would have full self driving.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>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).

A brand new 330i is 3500lbs. A Model Y is 4500lbs. That's a 28% increase in weight for a similar size car.

A Honda Civic is 3100lbs in full trim. A 530i is 3800lbs. My VW SUV is only 3850lbs.

That means more tire wear and more road wear. Are we at the point where EV fans are going to deny that EVs are far heavier?

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

#205
I read a comment here saying that they didn't like Progressive Snapshot, so they switched to Geico and cut their rate in half. This is my most recent anecdote as a different experience.

I was paying $620 (for 6 months) with Geico while letting them monitor my driving via my cell phone. The premium never went down although I had 110 scores in their EasyDrive app (In driving for over 11 years in the US, I never had an accident and never filed any claim car insurers; I always drive defensively and never got any ticket either). What I found was EasyDrive app is always punishing me for bad driving practices like running red light (again, the same experience some has mentioned here with Progressive) in fear of registering a hard-brake event; and worse, slowing down excessively to turn the corners (basically, surprising the cars behind me and risking them bumping into my car) because EasyDrive thinks ONLY IF you go below 15 mph then you are doing the cornering right. I guess these EasyDrive developers (or rule makers) never drove on a real road, and found that usually 20mph is the safe way to go about turning on the right corner.

Regardless, I got 15% premium bump in the renewal despite having 110 EasyDrive score (I think Geico raised their premiums by a very high percentage in CA as well; I live in FL and have been using Geico for all the years I've been driving in the US). That pissed me off and I explored other options, and finally got Progressive for $570 for six months. The sacrifice I have to do for this lower rate is to subscribe to their Snapshot program. I used my phone and have been driving for over a month. The relief (good thing) about using Snapshot app is that it doesn't monitor your cornering score. However, like some mentioned here, it still promotes bad driving behavior like running yellow/red light in fear of hard-brakes. It also seems to be a bit proactive in determining what a hard-brake is (again, I'm using their phone app) because I registered 2 hard-brakes (the only two hard brakes that I have recorded so far in about 1.5 months of driving) on my grocery trip. I swear I didn't do any hard brakes (or maybe at most once) because I know the road pretty well and I usually do grocery runs in early mornings on weekends when there are very few cars on the road.

I know I got much cheaper ($570 vs. $710) rate from Progressive now just because I am a new customer. I am pretty sure come next or next, next renewal, they'll jack up my premiums like what Geico did, and then I'll have to switch to yet another insurer like musical chair game. I wish that the car insurers actually have a more accurate, realistic, non-intrusive tech to monitor the driving habits (e.g., the ones who don't use turn signals when turning right/left or changing lanes, which really could cause accidents) and ACTUALLY give discounts to drivers like me who are very careful with their driving (plus, my wife and I drove a total of 6050 miles in the last year). This is all to say that the risk-reward distribution system with car insurance companies is still inefficient.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country you pay an anual fee for having a vehicle, like property tax but for vehicles. The larger the vehicle, more you pay, discount if you have an EV (no emissions). It's not that difficult.

Which is crazy. Use a car for 500 miles a year you pay the same as someone using it for 50,000 miles a year Just charge on the odometer reading each year. 3p a mile or whatever. Maybe charge more based on weight.

Power and fuel are still taxed on usage basis. There is no real difference except that road maintenance is also funded by a basic fee. It's a two way system.

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

#208
I like to joke that as usage based insurance goes to infinity, we all become uninsured drivers...

Each insurance company uses the telematics differently. While the pricing model is regulated, it is not public. There is a substantial difference company-to-company

I think this is an instance of HN-confirmation bias. We all hate monitoring, so a study or article that says UBI and behavioral modification is harmful appeals to us.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, and it's not great, but I think the flip side of this is that as I get older I find myself increasingly paying for the anti-social behavior of others. There are lot of nice customer service things that are only possible if people don't abuse them: solid warranty/return programs, high quality phone reps, etc. But you need people who adhere to the social contract, the kind of people who don't, say, buy a $3,…

> want some way to tell many of these companies "I am a responsible human being who respects social contracts" Cultural background + class would be the strongest indicator of this behavior. It describes the norms and expectations to which you are accustomed. Unfortunately it's illegal to discriminate based on most signifiers of this trait. The alternative to shared trust is costly and intrusive enforcement mechanisms…

How about just asking "Have you ever returned any item to a store for any reason except that it is faulty?"

If they say no, and you don't find their name on a few big stores lists of frequent item-returners, then you trust them. Everyone else, you consider shady and don't offer good deals to.

Remember lying to gain a benefit is wire fraud - so anyone who falsely answers this question has committed a crime - and a store is totally allowed to treat a customer they suspect has a committed a crime differently.

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

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Those are both massive cars. Under a ton is more typical and reasonable.

Under a ton?! Do you mean under 1000 kg? How do you figure?

The Dacia Sandero, one of the smallest cars I can think of here in France, that's also supposed to be cheap so doesn't have a lot of... anything, has a curb weight of 1,025–1,204 kg (2,260–2,654 lb) according to wikipedia [0].

The previous generation Renault Clio, which is a small city car, weighed around 1000 kg, too (980 at the lowest). [1]. Wikipedia doesn't have data for the current generation, which is somewhat bigger physically.

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Sandero

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Clio#Fourth_generation...

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