Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

money.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 414 posts

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

#221

Post by mavhc »

SavageBeast wrote: post #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.…

> Of course the data collected is going to say that as the insurance companies aren't in business to charge people LESS money.

Isn't that what they did in paragraph 1?

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

#222

Post by mavhc »

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…

Do you not have an privacy laws to prevent the selling your data? should get some of those.

I'm pretty sure your insurance company knows where you live.

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

#223

Post by rpdillon »

mavhc wrote: post #221
SavageBeast wrote: post #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.…

> Of course the data collected is going to say that as the insurance companies aren't in business to charge people LESS money. Isn't that what they did in paragraph 1?

My reading is the lower initial price is a incentive to allow the company to collect data. The data can then be used as evidence of poor driving, which then allows the company to raise prices. Although I've never used such a tracker, my understanding is they use proxy metrics for safety (accelerometer thresholds vs. accident record) that can facilitate this.

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

#224

Post by fn-mote »

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?

There is no reasonable scenario whereby your insurance company gets access to your geolocation trace information from your phone.

It is possible that your phone provider does not have more than 24 hours of records of which phone towers you connected to.

It is almost certain that the granularity of any information subpoenaed after the fact will not be sufficient to establish any specific behavior at the time of the accident.

Your phone provider is probably not using some off-the-shelf ML modeling to slap together a risk profile that you will be unable to appeal and yet is years ahead of any government regulation. (E.g., in the US if your credit rating causes you to get a worse rate, you must be notified. I have not looked, but I'm very dubious that your "Driver Risk Profile (TM)" will have any such obligations - now or in the imaginable future. See below.)

Biden's proposed AI Bill of Rights [1] is (surprisingly) a pretty interesting read:

> You should know that an automated system is being used and understand how and why it contributes to outcomes that impact you.

If this were a law, this part would be useful.

> You and your communities should be free from unchecked surveillance

I suppose watching your every move in the car isn't going to be considered "unchecked". Since people are all carrying cell phones, I'm not as hopeful this point goes anywhere useful.

[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/#privacy

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

#225

Post by droopyEyelids »

I got this from Liberty Mutual and it was an awesome mutually beneficial agreement.

Liberty Mutual only records your behavior for one quarter, and then gives you a discount for as long as you hold your policy. I ended up with a permanent 28% discount!

It analyzes your driving based on four factors: total miles drive, how fast you accelerate and decelerate, and whether you drive in the wee hours.

I found the temporary loss of privacy to be totally reasonable and an excellent tradeoff.

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

#226

Post by francisofascii »

alkonaut wrote: post #154
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 s…

> Eventually of course road taxes need to be extracted from something other than fuel.

If we get to a point where fuel consumption is so low that it stops generating significant tax revenue, then that is a great problem to have.

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

#227

Post by rs999gti »

logifail wrote: post #211
parl_match wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Q: How are governments going to replace this?

Add a supplemental registration tax to EVs and hybrids to make up the cost of consuming less fuel. Of course, taxes never go away, so enjoy this new tax as we enter an electric future.

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

#228

Post by heresie-dabord »

parl_match wrote: post #17
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…

> Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas That's because they kind of are. Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes. EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher weight. And it's not linear wear per pound, either. This is going to require a significant shift about how states and cities think about their road maintenanc…

How much fuel-tax revenue do we think Utah is recovering from EV drivers?

I would guess that we are talking about very small numbers -- certainly under 5% of drivers.[1] Whatever principle Utah is asserting to "recover" fuel taxes from EV drivers isn't making much of a difference.

At the same time, the Utah policy is clearly discouraging EV adoption.

> EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher weight.

We are talking about a small presence in the automobile market. If everyone were to drive a Tesla, then yes we would have more heavy passenger cars on the road.

For example, a 2023 Honda Civic weighs between 1,429 kg and 1,517 kg. One best-selling SUV, the Toyota RAV4, weighs 1755 kg.

But the most popular type of vehicle in the US (and in Utah) by sales is the pick-up truck. The top three pick-up trucks each weigh about 2500 kg.

If we are going to start quibbling about weight this way, we will need to recognise that drivers of vehicles should be taxed according to their obesity to maintain our roadways.

[1] https://electrek.co/2022/08/24/current-ev-registrations-in-t...

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

#229

Post by TacticalCoder »

parl_match wrote: post #17
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…

> Utah views EV drivers as tax evaders because they don't buy gas That's because they kind of are. Road taxes are often use-based, where gasoline is the way they extract "use" taxes. EVs also wear roads more than gas cars do, on average, because of their higher weight. And it's not linear wear per pound, either. This is going to require a significant shift about how states and cities think about their road maintenanc…

> And it's not linear wear per pound, either.

If it's not linear then the difference between a 4000 lbs car vs a 3000 lbs one is nothing compared to the damage done by a loaded 80 000 lbs truck.

What I notice, on european highways: it's always the rightmost lane that is deformed. The leftmost lane is never deformed. The aquaplanning risks due to water present in two bands on the lane is always on the rightmost lane. Always, always, always.

Why? Because the rightmost lane is the one trucks do use.

Where I live atm, in the middle of nowhere, there are two things deforming the road: heavy vehicles (I'm not talking about 4000 lbs cars here but tractors / trucks) and... Tree roots. Most of the patches made on the road are due to tree roots lifting the road's concrete.

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

#230

Post by cjs_ac »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #14

This is one of the least bad invasions of privacy I've seen. It shifts the burden of insurance premiums more towards those likely to cause accidents, and incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. There are actual benefits to responsible people, and to society at large, which is not something you frequently see with invasion of privacy.

These devices disincentivise hard braking when a pedestrian steps into the road in front of your car.

The idea that these devices can measure safe driving technique comes from the same school of thought as:

- More productive programmers write more lines of code per unit time; - Democracy puts the best people in positions of power; and - Telling the teacher is the best way to deal with bullying.

Road rules are simply the first order effectors of driving style; the exact conditions of the road are second-order effectors; the intentions and behaviour of other drivers are third-order effectors. All must be taken into account to drive safely.

Post reply on HN