GM collects driver behavior data then sells access to insurance companies

Any schlub can slip the tech at your autoshop a $20 to misread the odometer. Need more work to fake a digital reading.

This is all around the bigger issue here is how we fund road work: often it's done with a state tax on gasoline sales, so the more you use the roads the more you pay for them. Worked great, reasonably fair, even somewhat punished heavier vehicles (road wear is something more-than-linear to weight, and heavier cars generally need more gas). And then those pesky non-gas electrics came onto the scene.

So you now you have a system and a bureaucracy funded by a not-terrible pay-as-you-go tax, and suddenly lots of users don't need the thing your taxing. What's a bureaucracy to do?

Well, if you're in a state that thinks EV's are woke propaganda and an existential threat to your truck-based manliness, simple: you charge absurd annual registration fees and say "well, we gotta get the equivalent road tax somehow, so lets do it all at once upfront and ignore any of the equity talk about turning a pay-as-you-go into a massive flat upfront fee because only libtards care about equity."

Other states say "alright alright, we can split this registration fee into 4 quarterly installments" and they deal with the extra paperwork of now "keeping your registration up to date" is much more complicated.

No sympathies for Orwellian government-must-observe-your-odometer all the time, but I also see how it's a bureaucracy that was built around one system that worked ok struggling to adapt to a new technology.

My insurance just asks me for a picture of my odometer once a year.

there is nothing in place that prohibits that form of monthly registration that a plug-in dongle is going to provide.

If there's a mod chip why wouldn't you just modify the OBD tracking device? You can wire up a complete simulated OBD interface with a microcontroller and don't even need a car attached to it.

They should go after SUVs. They weigh as much (or more), use far more gas, obliterate anything they crash into (smaller cars and pedestrians), and they get a fucking IRS tax deduction.

> There has to be a better way to tax road usage.

There is, tax vehicles based on weight. The EV advocates don't seem to like this idea however.

The whole premise of tracking usage is bogus. The point of public goods is that we can’t value individual benefit or prevent free riders so we publicly fund them. Roads are the quintessential public good.

Think about it this way. If you never leave your house you’re still using roads. All your goods are delivered via truck. Your trash is hauled away via roads, your mail is delivered. Home repairs need roads to access your house.

There’s no way your road trip in your Kia is putting more wear on the roads than all of those things.

In the rust belt, cars have become less disposable every decade. Coatings/paint/corrosion-inhibition have gotten wayyyyyy better.

I’ll take the brand new modern car over anything from the 60s,70s,80s or 90s for durability.

while some cars are disposable... in practical terms, engineers designed crumple zones which make modern cars significantly safer. Crumple zones are not repairable because it "crumples". Couple that with air bags, and its easy to make replacement cost less than repair.

I’m a hobbyist mechanic and own way too many cars and I agree with your assessment all around. Newer cars are easier and cheaper all-around to fix in terms of parts (maybe labor is higher but it’s doubtful). So if a newer car is cheaper to maintain, why the rising insurance/registration costs for newer vehicles.

I own a mix of old sports cars to new SUVs and even a Tesla Model 3.

The old cars are cheaper to register so taxed the least yet pollute the most and are the most expensive to maintain in terms of parts.

Insurance premiums skew cheaper for older cars too unless it’s an agreed value policy.

Was your car still under manufacturer's warranty?

Thanks, seems to be the primary way most insurance companies share this type of data (accidents, claims).

At least I have peace of mind with 1 of these companies.

I'm not optimistic at all, but there is little else I can do. Best case scenario I can prevent the further spread of my data while it bit rots and becomes less useful. I will join the class action that is sure to come out of this, too.

But doesn't that crap lower the cost of ownership? I wouldn't buy it -- but isn't that the argument?

Serious question: how does one find out if a given car (make/model) has that stuff in it?

I'm kinda-sorta thinking about replacing my 2006 car, maybe. The last time I bought a car I definitely didn't have to worry about it spying on me :)

And what happens when every car manufacturer has this, and you need a new car? Walk? Start your own car factory? Nah. Consumer protection laws are the right way. It’s not actually a free market, despite what they might say.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

How long do you think it will be until they figure out how to get the same info from your phone? If they aren't already.

Mine does! The last two renewal cycles my insurance bill has dropped by ~3%.

It's not much but it's something. I suspect it has to do with my car getting older and my comprehensive being worth less.

Do average prices to fix cars go down? Have people generally been driving cheaper or more expensive cars over time? Why would we expect insurance to go down on things more expensive to insure?

Taking a quick peek, while insurance rates have been going up for while most insurance companies' margins are pretty similar to their historical margins.

> Does anyone's insurance go down?

Doesn’t your insurance go down over time? Mine does, and I expect it to continue so long as I avoid tickets or damage.

This is my problem with this, it's all whip and no carrot.

Yes, my Geico insurance has gone up and down over the last few years in SF to end at $120/mo.

I imagine that in the worst case, drivers can form an insurance co-op.

When I moved close enough to work that I didn't drive there anymore and reported that to my car insurance company, my premium was cut in half. So yes, it does happen.

But I wasn't driving a car that was spying on me for that. It was just a recalculation based on my self-reporting.

My Tesla insurance has gone down ~$30/mo showing that I've been a 'careful' driver or whatever. Perhaps they were overcharging when I first signed up, but I'm not complaining too much.

That said, the anxiety of always being watched when I'm driving and knowing that I'm directly impacting my wallet has made me consider just eating the extra $100 my old insurance provider wanted just to have the peace of mind that I can drive without feeling like taking that turn too fast just cost me $5

Consent will be laundered through fine print in contracts so long it takes hours or days to read and comprehend every implication.

Perhaps there should be some standard EULAs much like there are standard FOSS licenses.

The SUV ripping past you at 95 won't get dinged because SUV is a premium segment and manufacturers will move heaven and earth to remove pain points and prevent their customers from going to cheaper cars, even if that means subsidized captive insurance.

No, but you will get dinged for rolling through a stop sign at 1mph because your insurance doesn't have the covert objective of keeping you in a higher price bracket vehicle, so all they need is an excuse. 1mph through a stopsign? STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM (and pay us)!

It is naive to believe that this targets the wealthy drivers of gigantic SUVs. It's really targeting the poor who need car insurance and feel pushed to give up their privacy to afford it.

Maybe because you're in the passing lane and should be in the right lane then you wouldnt have that problem.

"But I'm going the speed limit and screw speeders !" It's not your job or place to enforce speed limits. It's also the law that if someone wants to pass you (and speed) then you get in the right lane.

So kindly MOVE OVER if you are unwilling to go the speed of traffic.

If you're being passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.

> what constitutes reckless driving is a black box established and controlled by the very same entity that charges you for that

Only if you buy GM’s insurance. Otherwise, it’s just tattling on you to a third party.

OP is correct. This is a stupid angle to attack non-consensual monitoring from that undermines the article’s credibility.

Having to drive defensively to avoid other people’s recklessness is a signal that you’re operating your vehicle in a higher risk traffic environment. Insurance already differs by geography, that sounds like more accurate pricing of risk. Bad drivers raise everyone’s collective insurance costs.

> Maybe someone with a lot of hard braking should drive differently, but if they haven't had any collisions and have a long history, it smells of 'pre-crime' to charge them more for something they didn't do.

I agree that it smells terrible.

But insurance is full of this kind of thing -- it's about predicting possible outcomes, identifying the random component that goes into it, and charging based on likelihood.

Consider the example of life insurance companies charging smokers more, even if they don't have emphysema or lung cancer yet. Maybe they should quit smoking but we understand the connection between risk factors and outcomes well enough that it's not unreasonable to charge more.

(Not exactly comparable, of course: it's hard to argue "well, I've smoked for 30 years and so far so good!" in the same way as "I brake hard a lot but I've been doing it for 30 years without an accident so clearly it's not a problem".)

> it smells of 'pre-crime' to charge them more for something they didn't do

Ignoring the fact that reckless driving is an actual crime and thing they did, not "something they didn't do", it is also probabilistically the thing that leads to collision damages. Insurance companies are probability companies first and foremost. It absolutely makes sense for them to charge more to cover behavior that is more likely to lead to payout.

A track record of completely avoidable near misses should still be penalized I think. Reckless wreckless driving is still a crime, even if it's hard or rare to have enforcement.

I'm not a fan of the surveillance without consent, but if this were opt-in I would be ok with reckless drivers being charged more for the wake of accidents they may leave in their path.

> Another big problem is lack of transparency: we don't always know what they're tracking.

And thats where it gets messy and infringes on personal freedoms: if you're required to purchase a risk-adjusted product but you don't know what risk factors you're being judged on, how do you know you're not being discriminated against unfairly? How do you know there's no mistakes? How do you know the person you sold your car to isn't accidentally affecting your rates because the insurance company's data broker never got the transfer-of-sale? How do you know the insurance companies aren't colluding and deciding you're on the wrong side of a Red Line they drew on some map?

With credit scores, there's been a long fight to get a half-assed kinda-free basically-complete credit report so you could at least see what you're being judged on. Where's the "credit report" my insurance company is making choices on so I can at least try to correct inaccuracies?

I get insurance companies make decisions based on information, and better information is just market efficiencies at work. It gets real messy real quick when the information affects something you're often required to purchase and you have no recourse.

Go ahead, get the market efficiencies from better information, but if you're being forced to participate, the government forcing your participation should also force the other side to present the information that judges you.

Come on, it would be pretty simple to do with even pretty conservative metrics: abrupt lane changes without indicating, frequent rapid acceleration and deceleration and swerving, if the car has cameras, then proximity to other vehicles or pedestrians while driving at speed, i.e. tailgating etc., if the car has gps, then failing to stop at intersections with stop signs, getting from A to B in a time that could only have been achieved with excessive speeding...

other lawsuit news from last month:

Florida Man Sues G.M. and LexisNexis Over Sale of His Cadillac Data

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/14/technology/gm-lexis-nexis...

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709991

Brits use “taking _the_ piss”. But they also use “pissed” to mean drunk.

Here in the US "taking a piss" means to urinate.

Example:

"Where's Bob?"

"He's in the bathroom, taking a piss"

No, it means the same thing in both countries. That UK usage is possibly used by some people but I don't ever recall hearing it in my 30 years there.

In the UK you'd say "queue" instead of "line", if I'm interpreting the context correctly.

UK: They were pissed off that the queue was too long, decided to go out on the piss instead so pissed off to the pub to get pissed.