Live data from Hacker News

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

money.com

211–220 of 414 posts

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

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A diesel truck that has three times the pressure on the road and easily ten to fifteen times the total weight, while getting about 1/3rd the gas mileage of the average US passenger vehicle. Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car for what amounts to shouldn't we expect that a vehicle exerting three times the pressure on the road should pay more per mile than 'just…

> Given the (unsupported) claim that a EV wears the road significantly more than a gasoline car This is an unambiguously, heavily supported claim. By states, car makers, the federal government, and third party analysis firms. It's incredibly uncontroversial. It's even got a name, and associated math: it's called the Fourth Power Law https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-... > shouldn't we expect…

> Gas taxes make up a relatively small part of the cost of gas

Over in the EU it seems that taxes and duties represent at least half of the cost of petrol, more in some member states

https://www.statista.com/statistics/937796/pump-price-and-ta...

Q: How are governments going to replace this?

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

#212
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much do you pay? About $1100 (comprehensive). I’ve never made a claim and have no speeding points, so I guess I get a good rate; but the OP rate still seemed pretty high for the model.

I got Geico to make me a quote for this Porsche 911 https://www.carfax.com/vehicle/WP0AC2A90KS149357 and it comes to about $4.4k where I am. And if I added this Porsche 911 https://www.carfax.com/vehicle/WP0CA29984S653662 it goes to $1.8k. So I suppose it comes down to driver risk in the end since my car is only $32k, not $200k like yours.

The majority of cost risk in insurance is that of third parties, not the value of your own vehicle.

People often say "the insurance costs more than my car is worth!" as if it's scandalous. But what it's insuring you against, primarily, is the risk of paying millions of $CURRENCY in medical fees to the third party. Your car's value is peanuts in comparison.

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

#213
A former girlfriend of mine came home one day with one of these devices plugged into her car. She was the kind of person who just said "yes" to whatever was on the form and she simply picked the lowest price option. My head immediately goes to the scenario where theres been some kind of an accident. Maybe it's a fender bender or maybe a pedestrian was hit. In one case you have a couple damaged cars and a deductible. In the other case you're facing down a manslaughter charge and even if you're not at fault it's going to ruin your life.

So now imagine law enforcement has access to your cumulative driving habits/traits and the last 20 minutes of driving that day. Imagine the insurance company has processed that data for its own purpose and assigned some kind of (totally arbitrary and contrived) "aggressive" or "risk" rating to certain actions etc. Law enforcement now has a prepackaged report that will invariably say you're a terrible driver. Of course the data collected is going to say that as the insurance companies aren't in business to charge people LESS money.

Now, whether or not you were or were not driving in a reckless manner, theres data to make a case with and nobody is perfect. That data may or may not reflect the reality of the situation and even so, prosecutors are known to take the easy route to boost their own stats. Now imagine a prosecutor looking for an easy win has a prepackaged report of biased information from the insurance company?

This whole thing seems like a way to possibly save a trivial amount of money in exchange for an increased likelihood of Really Bad Things happening to you.

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

#214

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.

Which is basically what we do in NZ. We have Road User Charges (RUC) that you buy in advance. We put road tax on petrol, so petrol vehicles don't pay RUCs. But no road tax on diesel, because tractors and other machinery that doesn't go on public roads. So we just extend the same RUC system for diesel vehicles to EVs.

(But not yet because we were incentivising EV up take. RUCs for EVs will be required in 2024 I believe.)

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

#215
post #202
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't want tires to be taxed, it would incentivize people to use tires more than they would do today, and that is bad news for traffic safety. Not only for themselves but for other people on the road too.

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

#216

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?

is it worse to be burgled 1-se or twice?

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

#217

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).

> 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 tha…

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

GP said "and EVs are typically nearly twice as heavy as ICE vehicles"

Also I'm sure you know that 330i is a sedan. Model Y is a SUV. They are not similar. A BMW similar to Model Y would be X3. it's weight is 4150lbs.

Did you know that BMW series 7 is around 4720lbs, compared to 4790lbs of a model S?

EV is heavier than ICE. That's never been a question. EV is gentler to the environment despite the weight.

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

#218
I tried this with an app. They offered 2% off after a month of data collection.

I called and turns out my insurance was already so “low” that 2% is the most it would have ever offered.

I dunno about elsewhere but in Canada, insurance is like tech job salaries, the only real way to get the best deal is to change providers every few years.

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

#219

A former girlfriend of mine came home one day with one of these devices plugged into her car. She was the kind of person who just said "yes" to whatever was on the form and she simply picked the lowest price option. My head immediately goes to the scenario where theres been some kind of an accident. Maybe it's a fender bender or maybe a pedestrian was hit. In one case you have a couple damaged cars and a deductible.…

The only issue with your scenarios is that nobody will ever get in trouble for killing a pedestrian.

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

#220

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).

2255kg is the maximum load, and 1700kg is not at all an ordinary car weight; hatchbacks are often closer to 650 and my sedan is barely over 1000. You could argue that those aren’t luxury vehicles, but downmarket EVs need to be heavy too, because batteries do not match the energy density of petrol. Myself, I’m replacing nearly every car trip with biking where feasible (young kids make that challenging, admittedly, but…

I think your figures are off. What hatchback only weighs 600kg? What sedan only weighs 1000kg?
Post reply on HN