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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

#61
post #19
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…

It's amazing how nosey Utah is. They want to scan your DL to find out who's buying alcohol, they're demanding id based age verification for watching porn online, and apparently they want to enforce monitoring on your phone+car.

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

#62
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you have to pay those anyway. But it will lower the total spend and so you'll have money available to pay them. You don't have to be rich or anything. I live in San Francisco, and insurance for my Subaru Forester costs me $1.2k/yr and I have comprehensive coverage. So if someone were to buy a $10k car and instead chose a $5k car, it'll be as if insurance were cut to $700/year for the next 10 years! If you value y…

> I live in San Francisco, and insurance for my Subaru Forester costs me $1.2k/yr and I have comprehensive coverage Wow, that’s crazy high. In the UK my Porsche 911 (992) is cheaper to insure than that! (Without an insurance tracker) Anyone know if US insurance generally much higher (than other comparative nations)? Or is SF an anomaly?

About $868 of that is for "Comprehensive" and "Collision" coverage, if it helps. It's possible it's just me, though. I've crashed my car once, and been hit on my motorcycle. In general, given that, I would assume it's more because of that than in general since I'm obviously a high risk driver. When I set my address from San Jose to San Francisco (I used to store the car at my friend's) it went up $200/yr so that's the SF premium for Geico at least.

How much do you pay?

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

#63
post #2

It feels to me more and more like you need to be rich to afford living without bartering away your personal information. I'm getting to be middle aged now, and have noticed a fatalistic attitude towards this by gen Z; kind of "it's impossible to maintain privacy, so I might as well milk my loss of privacy for all it's worth." And I'm wondering now if that's not completely correct.

Even if you were to pay the fee or drive a gas car, or you pay for the 'better' insurance to not be tracked, your movements are still recorded everywhere with ALPR cameras.

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

#64
post #2

It feels to me more and more like you need to be rich to afford living without bartering away your personal information. I'm getting to be middle aged now, and have noticed a fatalistic attitude towards this by gen Z; kind of "it's impossible to maintain privacy, so I might as well milk my loss of privacy for all it's worth." And I'm wondering now if that's not completely correct.

I’m reasonably rich and would pay good money not to be tracked. It’s not really an option.

I’ve started seeing ads for companies that try to get your data removed from sites and data broker.[1] I don’t know how effective they are but we’ve reached an age where there is a clear market for privacy. That feels very dystopian.

[1] https://incogni.com/

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

#65

Recently were shopping insurance providers for our brick and mortar business that has a few delivery vehicles, and MANY of the commercial insurers are requiring that their apps be used to monitor employee driving behavior. I hadn't shopped for insurance in quite awhile and was shocked at how prevalent this requirement seemed to be.

I'm kind of torn on this.

On the one hand, I hate the intrusiveness, that's a huge minus.

On the other hand, commercial drivers are subject to all kinds of perverse business incentives--too many hours driving, poorly maintained fleets, etc.--and if the insurance companies can stamp those out, that's a plus.

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

#66

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.

Probably safe to assume that this feed will be sold to Lexis Nexis or Acxiom, etc. From there, who know how it will be used for or against you in whatever sphere of life, at whatever time.

That would be problematic when the system is linked to a car and not the driver.

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

#67
post #2

It feels to me more and more like you need to be rich to afford living without bartering away your personal information. I'm getting to be middle aged now, and have noticed a fatalistic attitude towards this by gen Z; kind of "it's impossible to maintain privacy, so I might as well milk my loss of privacy for all it's worth." And I'm wondering now if that's not completely correct.

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,…

Is respect for social contracts really all that's necessary? I don't see it as adversarial, so much as I see it as "normal _and_..." for many vendors.

For instance, even if I could buy a TV and then return it for free, why not return it and charge a fee? Most people are willing to pay the fee, even if they wouldn't return it, so what's the incentive for any vendor to not charge the fee?

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

#68
post #20

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.

Assuming the data is only ever used for its stated purpose and not anything else…

The data doesn't need to be used now, today, for this purpose. What happens when an insurance company foists a new privacy policy on you, the insured, saying that it'll be using back data that it's collected for new purposes? To my knowledge, there are no laws on the books in the US that prevent that kind of behavior (ex-post-facto only applies to the legal system), and I'd imagine few would change insurance providers because of a privacy policy change.

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

#69

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.

I find it dubious that people who get good scores on these telematics are actually better drivers or less likely to cause accidents.

I've been stuck behind people doing 40 mph on the entrance ramp trying to merge into a 70 mph interstate. It's terrifying. They get a great rating for their leisurely acceleration, while vehicles on the interstate have to slam on their brakes and swerve to avoid them.

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

#70
post #19
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…

It's amazing how nosey Utah is. They want to scan your DL to find out who's buying alcohol, they're demanding id based age verification for watching porn online, and apparently they want to enforce monitoring on your phone+car.

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