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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

#381

Post by JohnFen »

Insthrowaway wrote: post #369
duffyjp wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fina…

While all those incidents you described weren't your fault, surely you have to agree that there's a correlation between driving in situations like that and being more likely to get in an accident? It isn't just about your driving performance, if you're driving in places or intersections where people tend to cut you off or run red lights - or hell, just places with lots of traffic and intersections in general - that's…

> It isn't just about your driving performance, if you're driving in places or intersections

To underline this, I had an enlightening moment with my auto insurance company years ago. I worked a handful of miles from where I lived, but the only way to get between the two was a freeway that is infamous for not only being highly congested (my average commute was a 45 minute drive each way), but for the numerous accidents that happened on it.

I moved much closer to my work, and when I updated my insurance policy with my new address, my premium was cut to nearly 1/3rd what it was before.

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

#382

Post by Robotbeat »

loeg wrote: post #357
Robotbeat wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, gas taxes act as a sort of carbon tax, so taxing EVs to compensate is like getting rid of a carbon tax.

That isn't the stated purpose of most gas taxes, though. (The stated purpose is funding roads programs.) Intuitively, EVs still need to use and pay for road use. It's probably better for legislatures to explicitly pass carbon taxes (or similar things like cap-and-trade programs).

No, gas taxes were always seen as part of conservation measures as well, especially since the 1970s. I see this claim all the time that gas taxes are purely a use tax, and that hasn’t been true for about half a century or longer, and just about everyone knows this, so I consider that kind of claim to be dishonest.

And yes, it’s less efficient than a carbon tax, but fundamentally you cannot deny the net effect of getting rid of the conservation aspect of gas taxes BEFORE passing a compensating carbon tax would have the effect of basically eliminating a carbon tax.

In other words, let’s talk about adding compensatory EV fees AFTER passing a carbon tax. Sounds fair and certainly better for climate.

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

#383

Post by bamfly »

hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #375
bamfly wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I get it, but it doesn't make it any less disappointing. And around here, a combination of defund the police and other factors have reduced the size of the police force. Patrols are down 40% since 2020. Hit and runs and other traffic incidents are up. None of the alternate solutions to law enforcement intervention have been implemented so we're just stuck with crime increases. Like a lot of places, we're dealing with…

100% of cases I'm aware of the police acting like someone's being ridiculous for thinking they'd bother to even run some plates captured in a video of a crime predate "defund", which I'm actually tepidly in favor of, since I'm pretty sure we could come up with programs to issue traffic tickets and hassle the homeless for a lot less than what we pay for the police. I've never once known them to lift a finger in the case of an actual crime, regardless of how much evidence you can hand them on a platter.

And I'm not in one of those supposedly-hellhole liberal cities that people claim have legalized all crime or whatever. Direct and second-hand experience with this stuff dates back to the 80s, for me. Zero times have I known the cops to help when a crime's been committed, beyond issuing a report for insurance (and sometimes charging money for that "service") and possibly snooping around to see if they can charge the person reporting the crime with something (hey, they're already right there, so that's a much easier arrest to make!)

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

#384

Post by [deleted] »

pookha wrote: post #318
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…

I suspect that you're probably not going to have a choice. At some point these things are getting installed into your car...Reminds me of AIS transponders on boats.

[deleted]

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

#385

Post by kbenson »

loeg wrote: post #116
throwaway1777 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn’t answer the question

I was responding to this aside, not the question: > whether they're completely treating federal roads separately or using it for the total, etc The tax does not distinguish types of road, much like a gas tax does not.

That sounds like it's equating Utah's taxing to total U.S. road funding, to which I say both "duh" about the result and "that can't be all that's going on in the report if it's about Utah, so there must be some disconnect in what we're talking about."

The context we were in is Utah gas taxes and how much it affects road funding that Utah does. Were you referring to something different? I would assume that Utah gas taxes, if they are intended to fund road work, would go towards state roads in Utah (but that's just an assumption, which is why I was interested in the source).

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

#386

Post by oatmeal1 »

cjs_ac wrote: post #230
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…

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

The monetary incentive is still wildly in favor of hard braking as opposed to hitting a pedestrian. I don't understand this criticism.

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

#387

Post by delusional »

joncrane wrote: post #248
delusional wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll extend that then. I'd rather Google and Facebook have my information than my bank or insurance provider.

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

#388

Post by namibj »

hnick wrote: post #170
xur17 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shocking to me that it requires an OBD device and a surveillance app. Can't they just check your odometer when you go to update your registration?

They do that in AU / VIC for the EV road use tax, you have to upload a photo. I don't see the problem, just make it illegal to lie and fine the ones you catch.

Take the car from the ones you catch.

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

#389

Post by danShumway »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #386
cjs_ac wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> These devices disincentivise hard braking when a pedestrian steps into the road in front of your car. The monetary incentive is still wildly in favor of hard braking as opposed to hitting a pedestrian. I don't understand this criticism.

That is not even remotely how people in the real world think; most people who are even consciously trying to think about long-term consequences struggle to prioritize safety measures while they're being actively discouraged against prioritizing them.

Consider that if people were capable of internalizing that hitting a pedestrian was more costly than being 5 minutes late to work -- and were capable of consistently applying that cost-benefit analysis in their everyday life, we wouldn't need laws like speed limits in the first place.

The human brain is not wired to think about risk in that way. It is wired to respond to regular consistent punishments for braking by braking less often. It is wired to respond to irregular novel punishments for rare events like hitting a pedestrian by ignoring that risk.

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

#390

Post by loeg »

gambiting wrote: post #372
loeg wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No -- gas cars don't pay the EV charger fee. It makes no sense for GP's non-plugin hybrid to pay it.

Well if they don't then why is OP's car required to pay it then?

I think you've touched on why OP was complaining about it!
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