Automakers are sharing consumers' driving behavior with insurance companies

Unless the car has cameras staring at you, it doesn't know if you're checking your mirrors before lane-changes, going 10-under the limit in the far left lane on a busy highway, etc.

Even then, cameras aren't good because assuming people are telling the truth when they use test-taking software, there are false positives that have to be manually-reviewed by proctors when the computer thinks you're looking in the wrong place.

(Edit: it also doesn't know if your mirrors are positioned properly so you do not have a "blindspot". In every modern vehicle I've driven, it is possible to set the mirrors so you can continuously see cars in the left or right lane next you - from the rearview mirror to the sideview mirror to the side glass. Hint, if you can see the side of your own vehicle in your sideview mirror: it is set improperly.)

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> frequent lane changes as a risk factor.

People not willing to change lanes is how you get more traffic and more dangerous driving overall. Traffic should stay right unless passing - which means once someone is done passing, they also need to move to the right. People crusing in the left lane is how backups happen and people trying to make more dangerous lane-changes to pass on the right. Less lane changes would be a bad thing to incentivise.

If more people used cruise control in general, that might help (don't know if any studies have been done about that). As it is now, most people's speeds ebb and flow and that causes traffic, especially when they either consciously or subconscious try to speed up to match someone trying to pass them, or whether it's curves, hills, narrower lanes due to automated tollbooths, bridges, etc.

We already have population claims statistics, a product of regulations that require reporting. What insurance companies want is discrimination within the variation.

Why is everyone so quick to say 'well, they are getting away with it, might as well let them' instead of trying to use our processes for the purposes which they were designed?

1) People don't understand they're being monitored. I think this is a good reason to be mad. People should have some understanding of the agreements they make. It's part of being a functional adult in the world. It's also annoying that the companies keep spinning this as a tool to improve your driving, when it's clearly an attempt to price insurance against a person's actual driving habits.

2) The system's assessments are opaque. I don't have a good sense of how accurate any of these measurements are, nor what system is in place to ensure that. If the information collected is consequential enough to double a person's insurance costs, there should be some effort expended to be confident that the collected metrics actually reflect reality. I didn't see anything like that in the article, maybe I missed it, but it shouldn't just be some random team in a private company doing their best.

3) People's driving habits shouldn't be shared with insurance companies. This one ... this one I think is not great. It looks like the shared data at least tries to be anonymous -- they share driving behavior and times, but not actual location data. Heck, I'd be fine with scrubbing the times and just sharing the hard start and stop and speeding numbers (assuming point 2 above is addressed). I get that a knee-jerk defensiveness about privacy would make Thomas Jefferson proud or whatever, but we strike balances on public welfare and private freedom all the time. If you're itching to manufacture 1 gram of ricin to put in a sealed glass vial above your mantle, too bad, you can't. Cars aren't ricin, but they are the shortest path between most humans and homicide. If this kind of intervention induces people to be more careful to keep their current insurance rates, I think that's reasonable. Driving like a maniac is not a human right or a protected characteristic.