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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

#241
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If your theory is that they can raise prices arbitrarily for profit, then you have to explain why they have not already done so.

Insurance companies complete on actuarial accuracy. I'd rather bad drivers pay more, and be in incentivized to drive better, than young drivers and all drivers pay more.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what they insinuated might be possible. You COULD save $X with this shiny new surveillance device! Im sure the executive who proposed this scheme didn't pitch it to the rest of the staff as "Ive found a way we can cut our revenues by 30%".

"I've found a way to reduce payouts with data collected by this device that our payers don't get to directly see except through our filtered interface"

"I've found a way to reduce payouts and reducing adjuster staffing, by helping drivers avoid crashes"

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Add a supplemental registration tax to EVs and hybrids to make up the cost of consuming less fuel

Q: How much fuel duty and tax does the average ICE vehicle (or rather, its driver) contribute?

I did some back-of-napkin math and came up with a figure of €500

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

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Sounds like me three days a week.

I walk out of my home carrying nothing more than a $20 bill and a newspaper. I go to the French cafe a couple of blocks away and have a leisurely lunch while reading the news without any tech or financial company following me around tracing, tallying, tabulating, and selling my life.

I call it "normal."

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

#245
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…

[deleted]

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

#246
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It's what they insinuated might be possible. You COULD save $X with this shiny new surveillance device! Im sure the executive who proposed this scheme didn't pitch it to the rest of the staff as "Ive found a way we can cut our revenues by 30%".

I’ve got the phone driving app from Allstate that monitors my driving via an iPhone app. I’ve seen my insurance go down as a result.

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

#247
post #124

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…

> This is an unambiguously, heavily supported claim. Your source claims no such thing. EVs may be heavier than equivalent ICE cars, but an electric Smart (the brand) is going to do less damage than a loaded Ford F150. Tax the weight, not a shitty proxy for weight.

…and an F150 uses more fuel than a car.

Your comparison is misleading. Compare an ICE car to an EV car, not the lightest EV to the heaviest ICE.

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

#248

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…

Often "legacy" institutions appeal to their age to tell us how they should be trusted with data. Ironically, they are the people I least want to have my data, since they seem completely incompetent in using it for anything valuable and instead just try to use it to grasp more power. I'd rather some scrappy startup have all my data than my bank or my insurance provider. At least the startup has limited power. My bank…

>I'd rather some scrappy startup have all my data than my bank or my insurance provider

Facebook was once a scrappy startup.

As was Google.

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

#249
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I know someone who's an actuary, and the reality is much simpler: people who consent to tracking tend to be safer drivers because they aren't afraid of the insurance company seeing their driving habits.

It gives the insurance company a way to identify a lower risk group of drivers so they can charge that group lower prices.

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

ICE vehicles do pay taxes by weight. Larger vehicles use more fuel and pay more taxes.

But this isn't necessarily proportional to the amount of wear-and-tear they cause on roads.
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