Hacker News Reader

Comment by marta_morena_25 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many people complaining here take their phone into the vehicle, or use Google Maps. Sure, the data from the car (whatever is included there) might give some additional insights, but these are very local (i.e. status of the car and perhaps lane assist) compared to what Google/Apple already collect anyway (i.e. the "big picture", which is far more valuable). At least here you get something tangible out of it: Lower insurance premiums (if they were higher, nobody would buy the freakin cars and I am pretty sure using this data for insurance quotes must be an opt-in anyway)

View on HN

There are several things wrong with your post. For one, Google/Apple selling your driving data to an insurance company is not likely happening today. This would be the same type of mistreatment of personal information as it would be selling your health data to a health insurance company. Not that I know, but I highly doubt that personal driving data is being shared with insurance companies from big tech. If they are, this would be a huge privacy agreement violation and would cause a massive lawsuit action against said companies.

You're also being misled to believe that these driving trackers will actually reduce costs for drivers. In fact, they only serve as a means to raise insurance premium on drivers that don't qualify for the absolute best rate. Did you ever run a stop sign? 5 MPH over the speed limit? Change lanes without signaling? This level of detail is possible with very accurate GPS and will only serve for the insurance companies to raise rates on most drivers.

There is absolutely nothing good about this move from Toyota, and other auto manufactures will no doubt follow suit. This will likely be yet-another-erosion-of-privacy that only serves big business.

You should not so easily desire a "you are the product" relationship with auto manufacturers.

Why don't insurers just raise all rates 50% right now?

My guess is it's because there's a competitive market.

This doesn't change this. This allows for better price discrimination than our current tables based just on age, car, neighborhood, gender, etc. This will raise rates for high-risk drivers and lower them for low-risk drivers. If the insurer does the first and not the latter, the latter will go to an insurer who does.

It seems like the view here is that everyone will only do the former, but again: why don't they do that right now? Why does the effect of competition vanish in this case?

"Every insurer will use this technology eventually" isn't an answer. Every insurer has accident data by age. As a result, they offer lower rates to lower-risk age groups.

>age, car, neighborhood, gender

I wish. it's even worse than that.

It's priced on your credit score, so if you're poor you're screwed, and it's priced on whether you're married too.

Here's how to get the best rates in the current system. In addition to avoiding tickets/accidents become a 50 year old female married driver who has an excellent credit score and drives a lower trim subaru crosstrek.

Or they could price based on actual driving behavior. Cue outrage.

>Lower insurance premiums (if they were higher, nobody would buy the freakin cars and I am pretty sure using this data for insurance quotes must be an opt-in anyway)

They can just make the insurance premiums the same and just jack up the non-data backed premiums.

In fact, they will be forced to do that.

They will slightly lower rates for the tracked drivers who are low risk, significantly raise rates for tracked drivers who drive like idiots according to their inscrutable algorithms.

Due to competitive pressure these things will come to pass. If one company does that and it lets them lower rates or increase rates slower, more safer people will buy from them. The other companies will have riskier drivers, and have to raise rates, so the cycle will continue unless they all adopt the driving behavior rating.

There have been no reports of either Google or Apple selling personal data to a third party. It is against there privacy policies and stated intentions. Google certainly collects and uses your data for it's own ends, but unless Google starts selling auto insurance it's not particularly relevant.

Apple claims to go to extreme lengths to anonymize data collected from Maps. Any information about locations visited is kept locally on your iPhone. Whether you trust them or not, it would be major news if it where found to be otherwise.

I think a lot of people are interpreting this as mandatory with no easy way to switch off. The article doesn't indicate how it will work.

And how many people complaining are Musk/Tesla fanboys...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com