Car is spying on you, leading to higher insurance rates

> This is, I assume, penalizing aggressive driving that hasn't yet resulted in a citation or accident.

If there's no context about the situation then how do they differentiate aggressive driving vs reasonable driving?

For example if you're in a 2 lane highway and the left lane is clear but you're behind someone doing 40 mph in a 60 mph on the right lane, so you quickly accelerate and switch lanes to pass them. Super defensive drivers who happen to also go unreasonably slow cause a lot of problems and traffic.

Also, what about temporarily speeding to get through a yellow light because the alternative is to slam on your breaks and potentially get rear ended. Or coasting a bit above the speed limit because you're "keeping up with traffic" on a major highway with no lights.

That's how insurance underwriting works anyway, as gender, age, car model ect are all used to calculate a premium based on risk.

In the UK you can have a "black box" fitted to your car by insurance companies, where low risk driving get you a discount on your renewal.

Which sounds more fair to use in rating insurance:

A. Their credit related data

B. Their age

C. Their marital status

D. Actual data on how they drive

I feel like D, actual data on how they drive is the most fair. I think there needs to be mechanisms to contest driving events and also regulations on types of driving data allowed, but I think overall it’s by far the most fair and directly related

But actually A B and C are used in most but not all states.

So credit bureaus have access to our credit history, compile and sell the reports without our consent and control. And now our cars share data so the same is done with our driving habits? The present is grim, and the future will be more so unless we step up and force lawmakers to pass laws to protect our privacy.

You can also partially opt-out: https://optout.lexisnexis.com/

„It‘s for your safety“

We have also had that for many years in the US. Most people don’t bother though. It’s opt in vs opt out, difference between 5% and 95% participation.

How does the app know if you are driving or the passenger in a vehicle?

In the US I'd just assume that app was hoovering up everything they could, selling it to data brokers and then giving me a small cut back.

Apply it to healthcare and rethink.

Not saying you are completely wrong, but I think there are other measures to stop bad driving.

The whole point of insurance is also the even out the tops and bottoms. If everyone paid their fair share cost for the insurance there would be no point with insurance. You could as well pay the damage yourself when it comes.

> This seems reasonable to me: if you do things that statistically correlate to being more likely to cause an accident, why shouldn't the insurance company charge you more?

The question is, though, does "hard braking" actually correlate to being more likely to cause an accident? I don't think anyone has supported these assertions with evidence.

Just wait until you are in an edge case scenario that was never considered by the algorithm and the people developing it, or there is a bug and you are marked as a bad driver forever with no option to challenge the rating, because for normal people in insurance, the algorithm/AI can never be wrong.

What isn't spying on me is nearly everything I use which contains the type of hardware that could be used to spy on me. The reason for that is that I keep things like that locked onto their own networks without the capability to reach back to their makers. I self-host more or less all my digital needs so assuming I'm not in the crosshairs of any TLA it is unlikely that there be spies in the server-under-the-stairs. My mobile devices run free software where possible, they are Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc.- free. Of course there does remain that one pain point of the radio firmware which is a closed-source blob and as such open to anyone with the money or governmental power to spy on me. There are also the banks which track financial transactions and the public transport companies which track where I go. When I'm on my bike, motorbike or tractor they're sadly out of luck since these are all old tech without any electronics. We heat the house using a wood-burning stove, I also use one to cook on, we generate more or less all our own electricity - yes, the inverter is also blocked from the 'net so it can not tell Fronius what we're doing here in the woods - but the power meter does spy on us though its radio transponder. I have access to what is supposed to be the same data through the P1 interface, it is theoretically possible to use this data to track whether we're home and what type of equipment (resistive/conductive) we're using. This is made harder when the inverter is running but it is not impossible. So, what is spying on me?

- mobile transponders

- financial institutions

- public transport companies

- power company

Who is trying to spy on me but with a bit of luck mostly thwarted from doing so

- Google/Microsoft/Metafaecesbook/Apple/etc (blocked and/or blended with other user's data)

- internet access provider (swamped with proxied data)

Who is not spying on me?

- vehicles (too old)

- internet-of-things devices (blocked)

Just looking at the past decade I think most people would agree that what isn't spying on you, will be.

Or if that's not popular how about what isn't spying on you would be if they could.

(And while I'm ranting, I'm sure manufacturers would love a subscription model for the clothes I wear as well but they haven't yet figured out how to do that.)

my laptop. my camera. my non-gsm vehicle. my garage door opener. my television. my coffee machine. my fridge. my e-reader. my paper library. my turntable. my furniture. my firearms. my hand tools. my bicycle. my luggage. my stove.

most of my tools aren’t spying on me.

this sort of “privacy is impossible, we shouldn’t fight privacy invasions” is defeatist and toxic imho.

>a good thing in principle to align driving behavior with insurance policies.

explain how it is not a roulette of penalties until you reach the upper echelons of wealth

No GM took it back a couple years ago. I would bet GMs recent refreshes for SUVs grabbed a little bit of market share. Toyota lagged a little bit and had the same models/versions for a decade. I’d expect it may reverse now that Toyota has a ton of refreshed models coming out, Land Cruisers, 4Runner, and the Lexus GX are a few examples.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/249375/us-market-share-o....

Or it's playing cards all the way down.

I see the whole thing collapsing from bad PR and taking the companies down with it.

Good riddance.

And give me my stick shift back.

It seems like mostly a paraphrasing of this NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

While this is true, the story is independently confirmed, so we can continue discussions on the subject anyway.

NYP is simply reposting NYTimes content.

There's already a lawsuit filed against GM.

Sorry I’m unfamiliar. Why?

In my NY suburbs, there are intersections you have to gun it because the local nimbys refuse traffic light installs.

(Long story short, there's one university here that has to use their state troopers to assert authority and shut local roads every hour for the commuter class change rush because the local morons refuse traffic signal changes, same university also had to use eminent domain to build sidewalks, lololololol)

O man, you should see our parkways, you only have 20 feet of ramp to reach highway speeds or you will die. Same for exiting and you need to brake from highway speeds.

Just an example where hard acceleration != bad driving

>>Hot take: rapid acceleration and braking are symptoms of bad driving

I might not fully agree with that (that may be what makes it hot take:)

I've been driving 30 years now, which means nothing (I firmly disagree with notion that "driving a long time" is the same as "driving well" or "being experienced":). I've taken about half a dozen safety driving courses though, and another half a dozen advanced driving courses, which hopefully might count for something - intent if nothing else. I'm trying to always be learning, practicing, paying attention to something when I'm driving - whether observational practices, state of mind, or particular skills in snow or rain etc.

I would call myself a very defensive, occasionally aggressive driver. I don't think opposite of defensive is aggressive, or that safe and defensive are same as slow. I think opposite of defensive is offensive. I try to be acutely aware of the conditions, traffic, situation, and risk - there are few people who are as paranoid about vision obstructions as I am (e.g. kid jumping behind parked car in a residential neighbourhood etc). I also try to be predictable - just like UI/UX shouldn't surprise user, I don't think I should surprise fellow drivers :). I am generally considered by friends and family to be annoyingly cautions, safe, observant, usually slow driver.

But I absolutely positively do undertake rapid acceleration and rapid braking at times, and most of the safest drivers I know do. My experience is that safest drivers are active drivers.

There's myriad different reasons to undertake rapid acceleration and braking, under myriad different circumstances and intents. But I am terrified of the future where insurance and police algorithm put a straight equation sign between them :-/

What’s rapid acceleration? What’s hard braking? Are the cars measuring it accurately?

Why do I want my property reporting this data without my consent?

100%. There is only one way to drive; calm and considerate.

Need to do everything to make sure drivers actually drive like this.

The opposition to this isn't "reckless driving is good, actually", it's "surveillance capitalism is creepy and bad".

> rapid acceleration and braking are symptoms of bad driving

Big fat "citation needed". I haven't seen convincing evidence that supports this at all.

And even if such evidence exists, I think there are a lot of edge cases: like what if your daily commute involves entering or leaving a highway where the ramp is unusually short? You're going to have to accelerate hard to come up to speed, or brake hard to get down to a safe speed. Should people be penalized for that? I would hope not, that the software would consider that to be infrequent, but I don't trust other people's closed-source software to make decisions that can greatly affect people's finances.

(For the record, I don't think I accelerate or brake particularly hard all that often, so I'm not trying to protect myself here; I have no dog in this race aside from a desire to protect people's privacy and minimize surveillance capitalism.)