The box knows I slammed on the brakes. Does it know the schmuck in the next lane dove in front of me?
If the user figures out the way to minimize beeping/penalties is to drive 45 in a 50 zone, does he now become a hazard for other drivers?
Will fender-benders go up because drivers have been disincentivized against hard stops to the point where they risk tighter and tighter spacing and go too far?
It doesn't really matter. You are still incentivized financially by the insurance company to slam on the brakes to avoid accidents.
> Will fender-benders go up because drivers have been disincentivized against hard stops to the point where they risk tighter and tighter spacing and go too far?
The way this is being interpreted is as if people will respond to an extreme degree to any incentive whatsoever, and they will choose the worst response to that incentive automatically. Your insurance rates will not double because you slammed on the brakes once. And people are probably more likely to learn to drive with better spacing so they don't have to frequently slam on the brakes, as opposed to playing a game of chicken trying to avoid having the insurance system know they once had to press the brake pedal hard once.
The interpretation is that (for most people) regular and consistent incentives/punishments at frequent intervals are more habit forming than irregular incentives/punishments that occur rarely and randomly.
If people were capable of internalizing that they had to drive safely to avoid having their insurance go up, then what would be the point of these boxes? Why introduce the reward/punishment structure at all if insurance premiums on their own are enough to influence behavior?
Frequency/predictability are hugely important for habit forming. A box that beeps at you every single time you brake too hard is a more effective punishment than a random insurance premium increase. Honestly, the premium risks are kind of irrelevant in both cases -- getting immediate negative feedback every time you brake is the problem.
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.
All hail AI.
Let's say you only analyze vehicle speed data. That is clearly insufficient for training self-driving.
But it is very likely there is some correlation between speed and insurance payouts. For example, say you are able to segment your customer base including one subset with drivers who typically drive >80 miles an hour and another subset with drivers who typically drive <55 miles per hour. Are you saying that you would predict that the two populations have identical risk profiles? That speed data has no correlation with risk?
Sure the passing driver is ultimately at fault, but the slow driver has blood on their hands despite no accountability. If they were driving the legal speed limit it may have prevented a serious accident and loss of life. of course, the insurance company would be none the wiser.
If the slow driver is on a highway with a minimum speed limit or they're performing other unsafe maneuvers like weaving between lanes or stopping abruptly then they're clearly not a safe driver, so I agree that slow does not always equal safe.
But otherwise the collision is both morally and legally 100% the fault of the passing driver. Drivers have no moral or legal right to always operate at the speed limit if it's not safe to do so.
My semi-rural town has very narrow roads and I regularly encounter utility vehicles, school busses, farm vehicles, and cyclists on the roadway, not to mention turkeys, deer, and turtles. If a passing driver caused an accident or was pulled over and they tried to argue to the police officer that the slower vehicle "provoked them" into passing dangerously I can't imagine anyone finding that a compelling argument.
The idea that these devices can measure safe driving technique comes from the same school of thought as:
- More productive programmers write more lines of code per unit time; - Democracy puts the best people in positions of power; and - Telling the teacher is the best way to deal with bullying.
Road rules are simply the first order effectors of driving style; the exact conditions of the road are second-order effectors; the intentions and behaviour of other drivers are third-order effectors. All must be taken into account to drive safely.
The monetary incentive is still wildly in favor of hard braking as opposed to hitting a pedestrian. I don't understand this criticism.
Consider that if people were capable of internalizing that hitting a pedestrian was more costly than being 5 minutes late to work -- and were capable of consistently applying that cost-benefit analysis in their everyday life, we wouldn't need laws like speed limits in the first place.
The human brain is not wired to think about risk in that way. It is wired to respond to regular consistent punishments for braking by braking less often. It is wired to respond to irregular novel punishments for rare events like hitting a pedestrian by ignoring that risk.
Going 55 mph when everyone else is going 70 mph is extremely dangerous but the insurance company will give you good marks for obeying the speed limit.
I refuse to use one of these monitoring devices, it’s extremely intrusive and patronizing. Insurance companies are not going bankrupt due to pricing risk incorrectly.
Think very carefully about whether you want to be behind a person who is scrupulously obeying every single traffic law. Especially if you get 3 of them abreast.
A car passing another at exactly 55mph while another car is going the same speed will take forever. We expect people to pull out, accelerate slightly, and then pull back in to get out of the way after passing even if that means you go above the speed limit for a bit.
Two lane roads often clog with truck traffic up hills. People pass these trucks on lanes in areas that allow it. The problem is that if you get too many people stacked up behind the truck who won't pass because they won't accelerate past a speed limit, nobody can pass and people will be trapped for hours at half the speed limit.
We call scrupulous adherence to rules "malicious compliance" for a reason.
Why would either driver would try to pass the other if they are going the same speed? If they're not passing then they should move to the right out of courtesy. (And they're legally required to in some states.)
> The problem is that if you get too many people stacked up behind the truck who won't pass because they won't accelerate past a speed limit, nobody can pass and people will be trapped for hours at half the speed limit.
If the truck driver is traveling "at half the speed limit" at any point then it should be a simple matter for even the most principled drivers to pass them quickly and safely. Whereas if the truck driver is traveling near the speed limit then the line of people "trapped for hours" are also moving near speed limit which seems fine. Plus, drivers of slower vehicles (trucks, RVs, farm equipment) are often courteous and pull over occasionally to let other drivers pass.
So that leaves cases where someone is driving a bit under the speed limit and is unwilling or unable to move to the side to let others pass. I don't begrudge someone breaking the limit by ~5mph to pass in such a case, but I also don't mind being "trapped" behind someone who scrupulously obeys every single traffic law even if it slows my journey by a few minutes. That would certainly be preferable to the unsafe behavior I see out on the roadways on a daily basis.
And, yet, I deal with this all the time in Texas and California. I shudder at the thought of more of these kinds of people on the roads.
> If the truck driver is traveling "at half the speed limit" at any point then it should be a simple matter for even the most principled drivers to pass them quickly and safely.
I think you don't have much driving experience with idiots on two-lane roads. I have experienced this failure mode in California, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania--I have no reason to believe it doesn't also fail elsewhere. It doesn't take very many cars piled up behind a truck before you do not have the ability to overtake them all while your passing zone exists. See this video for what kind of zone I am talking about (sorry that it's an annoying comedy defensive driving video): https://youtu.be/Duw-c8O8Y9Y?t=104
These kinds of tracking devices will make these failure modes worse, not better.