Car Insurance Companies Want to Track Your Every Move—and You're Going to Let Them

[brooklynite]

CityLab:

The proposition is simple: Install a device in your car and allow your insurance company to monitor your driving—how fast you drive, how hard you brake, how sharply you corner, and so on. In exchange, it will give you a discount on your premiums.

That might sound alarming, but it shouldn’t be surprising. Considering internet users already happily trade data on every online move they make in exchange for free services, the only surprise is tracking-based insurance isn’t already more widespread. Progressive Insurance, the biggest such insurer in the United States, says it found that

After analysis of billions of miles in driving data, Progressive has found that key driving behaviors—like actual miles driven, braking, and time of day of driving—carry more than twice the predictive power of traditional insurance rating variables, like a driver’s age, gender and the year, make and model of the insured vehicle.

The average discount on premiums for a Progressive customer who agrees to be tracked is between 10% and 15%.

[Historic NY]

1. I'll keep driving my 47 and 74 & 75 cars...

another reason not to trust Flo.

[hardcover]

2. I'll never agree to let them track my driving.

[williesgirl]

3. I told mine NFW back in Feb.!

[whatthehey]

4. Already do it. Why the hell would I care?

I have no fear whatsoever of Allstate, or any shadowy government agenct to whom they give access, knowing where I park my car at work, how fast I accelerate and when I go to the store. In what possible way could it harm me? Even in dystopian fantasies, the very worst they could do is allow automatic citations, but that would take quite a substantial change in law and since these transponders just pull out of the OBDII port I think I'll have time to react.

This strange paranoia people have over tech data collection is weird to me. I WANT more targetted advertising to my tastes and interests. Being a fairly safe and conservative driver I WANT my driving patterns to affect my insurance. Do people really think there are hundreds of millioons of Agent Mikes checking whether I and all the rest of you spend 76 minutes or 92 minutes at the mall and which parking space I use? A simple Occam's razor use tells you the mall facilities office has far more interest in that, and that it helps me if they can plan parking better.

[ret5hd]

6. Back already???

[whatthehey]

11. uh?

[TheNutcracker]

5. No way! I should get good rate based on my driving record!

Or not.

[Oilwellian]

7. Indeed

I've been with State Farm for forty years and only had a couple of claims for broken windshields. That record should speak for itself and earn a discount.

[herding cats]

9. That's how I feel about it too.

If that's not good enough for them, then there are other insurance providers out there.

[herding cats]

8. Not going to happen.

It took me all of 3 seconds for me to tell my insurance, "no, thank you." I have zero tickets and zero accidents. If that's not good enough for them to give me a discount, then I'll shop around. Which I did, but because my rates went up not over their offer to install the device on my car.

[LeftyMom]

10. Any insurer that can find a place to plug a device into a '66 is welcome to try.

[Initech]

12. If my insurance company gave me that option they would lose me as a customer.

Fuck that shit, I'm tired of companies thinking everything we do can be tracked and monitored for profit.

[sarcasmo]

13. Never.

[brooklynite]

14. I must say I find some of the responses interesting...

...your driving is checked by red-light cameras, your speed is checked by radar guns, in urban areas and parking lots your license plates are recorded, many of you have a transponder to pay your tolls, but heaven forbid that an OPTIONAL monitoring program might cut your insurance rates.

[cali]

15. not where I live- well once in a while I've seen a radar gun

The nearest red light is about 20 miles away and I completely doubt they're equipped with that technology. and for some of us, this just seems a little creepy. I live outside the bounds of much of this stuff because I don't care to be part of it. I recognize that internet use alters that to some degree, but I won't voluntarily commit myself to anything that involves my being monitored. This just seems like common sense to me, but each to their own.

[moparlunatic]

16. What about your

cell phone, can't it be tracked by cell towers? "You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube". Nowadays if you are out in public you better come to terms with the fact there is a good chance you are being monitored, video taped , and stored on some database somewhere. It sucks but you aint gonna change that.