Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored? The insurance industry, hungry for insights into how people drive, has turned to automakers and smartphone apps like Life360.
Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored? The insurance industry, hungry for insights into how people drive, has turned to automakers and smartphone apps like Life360.
The insurance industry, hungry for insights into how people drive, has turned to automakers and smartphone apps like Life360.
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Driving behavior analysis, or telematics, as the insurance industry calls it, could be better for consumers, leading to personalized rates that are more fair. Plus, if people have to pay more for their risky driving, they may drive more cautiously, leading to safer roads. But this will happen only if drivers are aware that their behavior is being monitored.
I'm so sick of this shit.
Just like the stop sign cameras, this only increases safety by penalizing and then monetizing minor mistakes that humans make. This is not about safety, it's about maximizing income through technological micromanaging of drivers who have not caused an accident and were not in danger of causing one.
You'd also have to be a damn fool not to realize that all the data they're collecting may not apply to their rate structure today, but in the future that rate structure will change, and suddenly a history of driver data you let them gather about you goes from being unremarkable to indicative of a problem.
The shareholders are demanding a blood sacrifice, so rates suddenly go up for people that have a driver score beneath a certain threshold where previously that threshold was higher.
Or some new bullshit study comes out claiming people that listen to podcasts while driving are infinitesimally more likely to cause an accident than people that listen to music, and whoops, Michael Barbaro has been your constant companion on every morning commute for the last 4 years. That's a pattern of risky behavior.
And if they think that this monitoring is going to help anything when people know about it, they need to learn about Goodharts' Law:
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
As soon as this becomes a thing people will get anxious and petty about it, and they will start trying to game the system, and that system gaming will take some portion of their focus away from driving and guess what, that's going to make them worse drivers.
I look forward to running their shit in an Android emulator that feeds it bullshit until my rates go down
Oh no... the Android rootkits are coming.
That's what we did. We were told the negative criteria were frequent driving, night driving, and all the driving BS you'd expect - hard stops, fast corners, etc. The company used a phone app, so we only installed it on my phone, had it disabled most of the time, and enabled it once or twice a week for a painfully slow drive to the grocery store just around the corner.
We had an amazing score which resulted in... No discount! We actually paid more. We got some bullshit low percentage off which was simultaneously offset by a mid-year rate increase. They claimed they had to reevaluate our rates any time they added a discount. Total bullshit.
I drive my car like I stole it. I will continue to drive my car and beat on it like it owes me money. I will never put a dongle in my obd2 port from my insurance company. I will never have any stupid app I don't need on my phone and my car is no longer hooked up to onstar. Fuck that. You put that shit in your car, you will never see lower rates, you'll just see smarter advertising. However, if you drive like me, I'm sure they'll charge you more or drop you.
I drive my car like I stole it.
So you drive it calmly and follow the rules?
But not too calmly and politely because that's also suspicious
Not calmly, I use the gas pedal and I'll drive 5 over the speed limit unless it's residential, then I'm cool.
I agree with you, but I still hope for your sake and others that you drive relatively safe and make good driving choices lmao
I do, I don't drive dangerously, I just like to feel the g's when I hit the gas and I don't like to be behind anyone at a light because 99 out of 100 times they're either going to sit on their phone, or take off slower than I can walk. If I'm in front of you, I promise you'll never have a second wasted because of my driving.
UPS drivers have been dealing with telematics for 20+ years. It tracks stuff like whether you back before you park or afterwards. How far you back. If your seatbelt is being used. If your cargo door is open while driving. Vehicle speed. Etc.
You WILL be observed and your behavior WILL be profitable. Failure to comply will result in a fine.
This is actually the thing that gives me most privacy assurance. My car company does offer this as an insurance product to themselves, transparently. Since they’re honest about this part of it, and have less profit incentive to those of us who don’t agree, I’m a bit assured that they are not motivated to sell my data to my actual insurer
If you think your insurance company isn’t selling your data to other companies, you are in for a surprise.
My insurance company, for example, requires so many permissions for their app, just to show my insurance coverage. I refuse to use it because they don’t need my contacts, calendar, use details, phone information, location, network status, and whatever else they are asking for. They have no use for this information, so why would they collect it? Oh right, because they are greedy and consider customers to be multiple revenue streams.
Part of the privacy policy for using the app is agreeing to be a product for them. Hard pass. I give them more than enough money considering they have never paid out a single fucking penny for anything (tho we’ll see how I feel tomorrow when the adjuster comes out to inspect the storm damage to my roof - probably the same.)
If a scammy company like insurance is doing a thing, you can bet they are not being benevolent. They are taking whatever you give them and it will fuck you eventually.
I interact with my insurer, over the phone, through an intermediary. And of course I pay them. The only info they have is pii and financial. My driving history and score is available from the state.
My last at least two cars likely report highly detailed driving info to their manufacturers, and I really can’t do anything about it. I care enough to click “no” wherever I can but not naive enough to believe it
However my current vehicle manufacturer also does insurance. If you use their insurance, you are letting them rate your driving by every little minutia. They are less likely to sell this data because they have a product that it’s a differentiator for: it’s not in their best interest to give competitors their competitive advantage