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Comment by Barbing | Hacker News Reader

> Is my insurance going raise my rates because my vehicle won't provide telemetry for them to buy?

Thanks, I hate it.

Already happening. To get the lowest rates from some companies, you have to install monitoring software in your car. We missed the boat on this one.

One example: if you don’t get it from State Farm, you can pay 30% more in insurance costs.

https://www.statefarm.com/insurance/auto/discounts/drive-saf...

A bargain.

I tried using an older version of that program, and it was especially annoying because it only worked if you let it monitor and phone home continuously, not just while driving. If the app couldn't steal your information often enough, you were disqualified from the program, stating that it assumed you were hiding some driving activity.

You can get tesla insurance and it monitors your driving.

If you do not agree to this monitoring, they will not insure you.

also, full self driving (or autosteer) both require the cabin camera to be enabled and to monitor you.

Tape over it.

Replace the camera feed with a looping video stream.

I taped over all my Tesla cameras (except the backup camera). The real issue was that the person I'm teaching to drive kept checking the screen for things like where to stop at a stop sign, or to see if the car thought they were too close to the curb. Couldn't have that.

Responses are typical: "That's so unsafe!" Imagine the response if they ever learned I routinely ride a motorcycle that doesn't even have ABS!

Then we get to the security aspect. I'm supposed to trust cameras, connected to the internet, on closed-source hardware, run by a vendor that has a history of misusing the data? No thanks.

> Responses are typical: "That's so unsafe!" Imagine the response if they ever learned I routinely ride a motorcycle that doesn't even have ABS!

I'll repeat that. Depending on the model+year of your car you lose out on a lot of safety features, possibly even automatic emergency braking because they had no radar for a while. If you were ever in an accident the fact that the safety features were deliberately disabled may be used against you.

It makes more sense just removing the SIM so they can't get anything. They even have instructions on how to do that in the manual.

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