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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

#331
There's no such thing as a device that only "saves you money" - insurers are going to use the data to give you a discount one minute, and take it away the next. My insurance already shows a line item for a "safe driver discount" - I'm sure it's only a matter of time until I have to fork over my data to "keep" the "discount" they've already built into their list price.

Great case in point, Tesla insurance dings people for "late night driving" -

https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/10xaj74/do_not...

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this has a hot take. A couple weeks ago a car intentionally rammed into me from behind. I called 911 and the police took 30 minutes to arrive on the scene. The officer talked to me for about 3 minutes and then threw up their hands and said they wouldn't do anything because I didn't have a plate number and couldn't identify the driver. The police didn't even want to bother trying to get footage from nearby…

More and more people have dashcams now for this reason. Of course those can be used against you as well. Honestly if there's no injury, the police aren't going to care too much about damage to your car. They figure you're insured, so you'll be taken care of. In most cities they have bigger fish to fry and a car accident with no injuries is just not that important. I don't think they're entirely wrong.

I had a situation a few years ago driving down a highway at night when all of a sudden I noticed a weird "thing" in the sky in front of me. It got closer and I swerved, but not enough to avoid it hitting the side of my car, taking off the side mirror and gouging up the front half of the drivers' side. Then I realized it was the plastic bed liner of the pickup truck in front of me that became unattached at highway speeds and flew into the air like a kite. My car was still operable, and I had a (poor quality, especially at night, but operable) dash cam, and the truck ahead of me didn't stop, so I sped closer to close the distance to the truck and for assurance, read out the license plate number aloud so the dash cam's microphone could pick it up before pulling over.

Contacted the police, took them about an hour to respond, and the officer gave me his email so I could send him the video. It was hard to make out but you could definitely see the object leave the truck, and a few seconds later appearing in my view, and me swerving.

Contacted insurance, they arranged the repairs, and I was out the deductible. About a week later I got a call from the police saying they looked up the plate and lo and behold, it wasn't even registered to a white pickup truck, but a blue sedan, so the plate was either stolen or swapped from another vehicle, at which point there really was no recourse.

Long story short, even if you have a dash cam, sometimes you're SOL. I _did_ use that as an excuse to upgrade my dash cam to one with better quality and night vision, but yeah, shit happens, and if nobody got hurt sometimes you gotta just accept it.

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

#333
post #303
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All new cars have a blackbox that records what happened before a crash. So it would just stop the constant monitoring point.

Is there a known date before which this wasn’t the case? If you want to buy a car that doesn’t have such a device, do you need a 2010? A 2019? Country dependent?

I honestly have no idea the exacts. But I know some cars have it even since 2003.

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

#334

The only way I would even consider to have one of these things is if the insurance premium would be reduced proportionally to how much I (don't) drive. Only use the car on Sundays? Pay 1/7 of the price. But of course prices can only go up.

I think you can get something similar to this nowadays even from the big insurance companies. I thought I remembered some startups doing micro-transaction insurance policies that started and ended with each new trip -- did some searching and found that Allstate has something similar: https://www.allstate.com/auto-insurance/milewise

You pay a small retainer fee ($1.50/day) and then a per mileage fee. This requires the use of a logging device which also impacts your per-mile rate depending on your driving.

I haven't dug into the nuts and bolts of this, but I wonder how well you are covered when the vehicle is not in motion - parked in garage, on the street, etc. At least in my area parking in public can be a risky option between the hit and runs, catalytic converter theft, break-in, etc.

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

#335
post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see this has a hot take. A couple weeks ago a car intentionally rammed into me from behind. I called 911 and the police took 30 minutes to arrive on the scene. The officer talked to me for about 3 minutes and then threw up their hands and said they wouldn't do anything because I didn't have a plate number and couldn't identify the driver. The police didn't even want to bother trying to get footage from nearby…

> The police didn't even want to bother trying to get footage from nearby cameras when I called back and noted the location of several nearby security cameras that might have picked up the vehicle. If it's any consolation, this is, IME, normal. Unless they stumble on a crime in progress, the cops won't do anything at all to actively attempt to catch the culprit, even when you have things like video of the car with li…

My home was straight up robbed while I slept three years ago. The convenience store on the corner has cameras facing our property that the suspects walked directly beneath. Despite having been told this, the "detectives" never followed up to see if they could get the footage.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely listened in a legal podcast that somehow juries award lower sentences to road accident deaths as compared to others. Seems strange.

And you’re using a throw away to make unsubstantiated claims without reference. You’ve given no reasons to take your comments as made in good faith.

I just use the term throwaway instead of JohnDoe. A quick search:

https://abcnews.go[.]com/US/hit-run-drivers-kill-people-jail...

If I find the legal podcast link then I will link it here.

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

#337

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.…

I was fooled into using one from Progressive once. For the record I'm an extremely cautious driver of a 99 horsepower Prius C, exactly the type an insurance company should love to insure. Any breaking of even moderate intensity causes the box to beep and your "safe driving score" goes down. Yellow light, run it or your insurance goes up. Someone cuts you off and you avoid an accident, your insurance goes up.

The final straw for me after a few months was another driver running a stop sign and feeling my brain waste milliseconds deciding if I should hit the brakes as hard as I should or juuuust hard enough to avoid hitting them in hopes I don't get a beep. I did the latter and it beeped anyway so I ripped it off the ODBII port and threw it on the floor. I changed insurance companies the moment I got home from work.

My final score was really poor and I was pissed since I'm the slowest and safest driver I know.

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

#338

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,…

Like a social credit score!

The more time goes on, the less opposed to this I am. There are too many bad actors in society who fuck things up for the rest of us.

Behaving is too hard for some people and I'm fine with punishing via a social credit score.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more people have dashcams now for this reason. Of course those can be used against you as well. Honestly if there's no injury, the police aren't going to care too much about damage to your car. They figure you're insured, so you'll be taken care of. In most cities they have bigger fish to fry and a car accident with no injuries is just not that important. I don't think they're entirely wrong.

I had a situation a few years ago driving down a highway at night when all of a sudden I noticed a weird "thing" in the sky in front of me. It got closer and I swerved, but not enough to avoid it hitting the side of my car, taking off the side mirror and gouging up the front half of the drivers' side. Then I realized it was the plastic bed liner of the pickup truck in front of me that became unattached at highway spe…

The police in your area doesn't do anything about swapped or stolen plates? It's odd since they seem to be the group that would care most about the accuracy of plates matching the car.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to support the point you replied to. You point to a group of people who opted out of monitoring and exhibited risky driving behavior, leaving leaving lower risk people in the monitored group

They all consented, initially. The insurance companies got the data they need.

The people who stay in the plan are the low risk group, obviously there will be some percentage of churn in the first year.
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