Tesla officially launches its insurance using ‘real-time driving behavior’
electrek.co
electrek.co
If Tesla starts charging people who push the petal to the medal at every green light, or take every turn at 2G’s, then good drivers rejoice. I was a pricing actuary in a prior life, I would LOVE to see what kind of loss information they get from granular driving habits.
Focusing on bean counting is missing the point.
Am I confident that they won't? Also no.
This isn't a better use for data collection, we're just getting paid for the loss of privacy instead of giving it away for free.
Name one single better use of my driving habit data than directly saving me money.
Keeping it to myself.
Some people get paid to be erotic models; that's you. "Name one single better use of my hot bod than directly making me money."
Other people find it far more valuable to keep that to themselves.
1. By increasing significantly the fee of whom is driving slightly worst than you (thus increasing the chance of having people without insurance driving cars)
2. By not allowing people at risk to purchase the insurance in the first place. Which increases again the chance of having people without insurance in the road.
This definitely helps insurance company to avoid paying compensations in case of accident so that they can insure only people that have very little chance to cause an accidental thus increase their margins
A huge step forward for insurance, a huge drawback for society.
Now fast forward 20 years and you can't buy a car insurance because you push too hard on the break.
Are you talking about the US? Because the ACA made that illegal years ago.* Your slippery slope hand-wringing doesn’t hold water.
*Under the ACA, premiums can only be based on three factors, IIRC: age, sex, and whether you’re a smoker. (And zip code.)
I'm not sure how that is in the US, but the abuse can come from anywhere and the result is likely to be worst that what they claim to be helping preventing.
> Health insurers can no longer charge more or deny coverage to you or your child because of a pre-existing health condition like asthma, diabetes, or cancer. They cannot limit benefits for that condition either. Once you have insurance, they can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition.
I'm happy to see that is not the case in the US, but my was a general comment non necessary related to the US. But the fact that they're till law in the US presuppone that insurance company were behaving they way before.
The problem is that those things aren’t inherently what makes a good vs bad driver. If it was - are all race car drivers shit at driving? What about people who never do any of that and yet wreck their cars all the time?
Number one reason for people crashing is being distracted.
It used to be that you'd get a high insurance fee only if you cause incidents or damage.
But now not, you get to pay more if the Algo thinks that you drive shit.
Minority report is one step closer.
There are factors such as driver experience, age and precious track record (good/bad driver based on accidents) but never based on driving style.
Age is based on aggregated data which says that people with less experience are more likely to cause accident.
We can argue the whole day, but this is not a tailored fee as is not build based on my personal behavior.
Same reason that you can't drive a car when you are 5 years old or you can't drink before 18 (or 21).
You can argue all day, but it doesn't change the fact your main argument was you would no longer be charged based on facts but assumptions. The current method is largely based on assumption. Using actual data on your driving is not an assumption.
It may not have been your intention but that is how you wrote it. Two statements about no longer being charged based on facts, but on assumptions. One comment linking using your actual driving data as "assumption".
> There are factors such as driver experience, age
So making assumptions based on "driver experience" and age is not making assumptions?
As a safe driver, I welcome these types of discounts based on good driving habits. If you do something associated with risk, like a sudden stop, then you should change your behavior.
Who does tell you that I drive dangerously in the road?
Maybe I bring my car in a circuit every now and then to have fun.
There will be a day when this would not be optional anymore
Because of this, these systems typically are used exclusively to offer discounts against the baseline insurance premium and they can only lower the premium relative to the assumed default risk. It's all carrot, no stick.
https://www.nationwide.com/personal/insurance/auto/discounts... "Can SmartRide increase my premium? No. This is a discount program."
https://www.usaa.com/insurance/safedriving "Will my driving information impact my insurance rates? No. We will only use your driving information to calculate your discount."
Insurance companies are willing to offer these steep -- 40% -- discounts because bad driving is so extremely expensive and damaging. The added signal of driver behavior patterns can allow the insurance company to lower their rates by almost half. Almost half!
As an aside, these are the types of insurance premium reductions we should expect, or better, when self driving cars first become a reality.
There are overall considerations (eg. Age of the driver, cat accident history etc) but was never about how I drive my car.
You said "It used to be that you'd get a high insurance fee only if you cause incidents or damage".
I'm saying that no, Insurance cost has always been based on factors other than just accident history. And you seem to be agreeing with me.
Driving style was never (at least from where I'm from) a factor that determines the fees of the insurance
A) Insurance shouldn't know how often you hard-brake or tailgate (aka privacy)
B) Insurance shouldn't use the above data to "assume" how safe of a driver you are
EDIT: Main thing that irks me about this is the invasion of privacy. Less data = good in my book and this is the complete opposite so I'd probably pay a premium not to use that.
So if there are lets say, 90% good driver and 10% of bad drivers, if you are happy to pay less (and you belong to the 90%) then you'd have a 10% people that either pay a lot for their insurance or don't pay it at all because it become too expensive.
So lets say out of the 10% drivers that have a bad behavior, 50% of them (thus 5% or the total) go out without insurance.
Now, it you are, for some reason, unlucky enough to meet one of the 5% without insurance and, unfortunately, you are on a car accident with one of them and that person run away without giving you a chance to ask for damage and, even if you can, he has nothing to repay off this damage, would you be happy?
Is hard to enforce the law to 100% of the population.
From where I'm from, the number of people driving without insurance has increased for various factors in the last few years. From a 0.x to a 1.x %
One of the big questions with self driving cars is "who is at fault" and if Tesla the corp defacto volunteers by underwriting the liability, then that may pave the way for laws/policy aimed around the car manufacturers holding the blame.
The differentiator here is that the functionality is built into the vehicle natively, and when on Autopilot, those miles are not included in your scoring (which aligns your interests with Tesla’s; they’re incentivized to make Autopilot safe and you’re incentivized to use it).
[1] https://www.statefarm.com/customer-care/download-mobile-apps...
[2] https://www.usaa.com/insurance/safedriving
[3] https://www.amfam.com/insurance/car/knowyourdrive
[4] https://www.allstate.com/drive-wise.aspx
[5] https://www.progressive.com/auto/discounts/snapshot/snapshot...
(disclosure: Tesla owner)
It's a regular insurance. Tesla isn't taking liability any more than Geico does.
When robotaxis happen, regardless of who makes them, the maker and/or operator will be liable for accidents.
There will be no big question.
Nothing else makes sense and probably nothing else could possibly be legal.
You can't say "you can go to sleep in a car but if it gets in an accident you'll pay for it".
First of all, I think the way "FSD" is disclaimed (don't take your hands off the wheel, don't stop looking at the road) is going to mean that Tesla has a much easier time denying claims than a traditional insurance company.
If I'm, say, State Farm, and I'm insuring a Tesla that gets into an accident, I may not be able to prove that the driver was using "FSD" and/or whether they were holding the wheel, paying attention, etc.
Tesla, on the other hand, can get this data instantly and deny the claim based on very minor deviations from the "FSD" instructions.
We already see this sort of conflict of interests in Kaiser Permanente health insurance and their hospitals, it's a huge problem.