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

money.com

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

#341

Post by xethos »

commandlinefan wrote: post #259
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…

> can you trivially determine somebody's home address Well, your phone has already done that - Waze "helpfully" auto-populated my home and work address for me.

But people think it's creepy when they realize how much metadata they're feeding to the multinational conglomorates (to then be bought or commandeered by their government agencies).

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

#342

Post by xethos »

Spivak wrote: post #265
zimzam wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you want true accuracy you're going to need to track the car 24/7 which would be unpopular.

Or worse - it could be popular.

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

#343

Post by Etrnl_President »

mrguyorama wrote: post #329
Etrnl_President wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have to go through 3x the registration effort, and do it in every state they drive in.

No, they all just get registered in Maine which supposedly has pretty lax rules on Semis

I travel a lot, and see semis from most states, and commercial pickup haulers from all states. They say NJ, NY, KY, and UT, are especially penurious about additional registration and licensing.

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

#344

Post by trgn »

rpodraza wrote: post #128
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #72

It's starting to feel like Europe. In Belgium you couldn't drive a miles without being recorded on some ALPR camera. Speed cameras everywhere. And the current rage is average speed cameras. So they take your photo on an on-ramp and when you take the exit they'll calculate the average. Above the speed limit: ticket. With no way of facing your accuser in court. The machine said so...

So you're claiming these are inaccurate? Do you have any other solutions for speeding? I think these are still much better solution than a device that tracks your location all the time.

Speed limiters on cars. Limiters on acceleration would be good too.

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

#345

Post by trgn »

quickthrowman wrote: post #78
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.

> and incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. Going 55 mph when everyone else is going 70 mph is extremely dangerous but the insurance company will give you good marks for obeying the speed limit. I refuse to use one of these monitoring devices, it’s extremely intrusive and patronizing. Insurance companies are not going bankrupt due to pricing risk incorrectly.

It's not. Going 70 in close proximity is extremely dangerous.

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

#346

Post by LanceH »

gwbas1c wrote: post #310
LanceH wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casualty insurance companies just want the numbers, then to set the markup, then profit. They've filled out that elusive intermediate step. If it means finding a way to get a customer a discount then that's ok, as long as they have the customer. The biggest factor they can monitor is verifying miles driven. Miles driven, unsurprisingly, has a bigger impact than virtually anything else someone signing up to be monitor…

> The biggest factor they can monitor is verifying miles driven. Miles driven, unsurprisingly, has a bigger impact than virtually anything else someone signing up to be monitored would be guilty of. In general, no surprises. What really surprises me is that my insurance company never asks for an odometer reading. I haven't changed insurance in years. It's also hard to estimate how many miles I will drive in a year be…

They may have it from safety inspections or oil changes if you have those done at a mechanic.

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

#347

Post by iamatworknow »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #339
iamatworknow wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe they do, or did in this case, but I wouldn't expect them to keep me informed on what happened.

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

#348

Post by WirelessGigabit »

thecopy wrote: post #136
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #72

It's starting to feel like Europe. In Belgium you couldn't drive a miles without being recorded on some ALPR camera. Speed cameras everywhere. And the current rage is average speed cameras. So they take your photo on an on-ramp and when you take the exit they'll calculate the average. Above the speed limit: ticket. With no way of facing your accuser in court. The machine said so...

What is the problem? That you cannot break the law without consequence? Car-drivers have a strong sense of entitlement that i never have seen in other non-radical groups.

No actually. Speed kills.

I am against mass surveillance. Remember when Snowden released all those documents? How we were all angry about the NSA spying on its own citizens?

Systems like this do the same, although they justify it as a means to stop speeding, which, to be fair, they do very well.

But we go from one month of data retention to multiple months, and then someone finds old data that was not deleted and the government allows its use, and now its acceptable to store this data for 2 years etc etc.

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

#349

Post by asoneth »

oceanplexian wrote: post #287
asoneth wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone can be a “safe” driver on paper, never get into an accident, but their actions regularly put other people in harm’s way. For example someone who’s driving well below the flow of traffic will provoke other drivers to have to pass them, but then eventually it results in someone getting into a head on collision. Sure the passing driver is ultimately at fault, but the slow driver has blood on their hands despite…

> Sure the passing driver is ultimately at fault, but the slow driver has blood on their hands despite no accountability.

If the slow driver is on a highway with a minimum speed limit or they're performing other unsafe maneuvers like weaving between lanes or stopping abruptly then they're clearly not a safe driver, so I agree that slow does not always equal safe.

But otherwise the collision is both morally and legally 100% the fault of the passing driver. Drivers have no moral or legal right to always operate at the speed limit if it's not safe to do so.

My semi-rural town has very narrow roads and I regularly encounter utility vehicles, school busses, farm vehicles, and cyclists on the roadway, not to mention turkeys, deer, and turtles. If a passing driver caused an accident or was pulled over and they tried to argue to the police officer that the slower vehicle "provoked them" into passing dangerously I can't imagine anyone finding that a compelling argument.

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

#350

Post by trgn »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #225

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…

Considerate driving should be rewarded. Great to see in action.
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