Every time my insurance renews they try to sell me on plugging something into my OBD2 port so they can gather data on my driving. That’s a hard pass. My insurance has gone up quite a lot, but this is something I don’t want to compromise on.
Adjacent to this, in my state I can save ~ $200 on my EV registration if I plug in a tracking dongle to read mileage. For some reason, just reading the odometer difference is not enough.
Odometer scams were a big thing before it was digital and I'm sure someone has a mod-chip style thing for EV cars if there is money involved. Also solves issues of if you sell the car, car gets totaled, stolen, etc, they will still know. It could also enable monthly registrations fees which may be better for some people than a $600+ once a year vs $50/mo if it's all electronic.
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.
I have yet to hear a good explanation of why the odometer isn't sufficient. Either the cost to manually read is outrageous or there's nefarious secondary purpose.
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.
It gets weirder. In my state (Oregon) it's not even the government that is gathering the data, it's a third party that's authorized by the government. I assume the government gets that data, but I also assume that the 3rd party is happily allowed to correlated and package the data to sell how it sees it (that may not be fair, but there were no explicit statements of privacy safety on the sites...)
There are 3 companies that do it. Only one of them will do a non-GPS-based system, but it still requires a dongle plugged in and is limited to a small set of vehicles. I'm not really sure why.
To further complicate things, do I choose the Insurance dongle to save money on insurance, or the EV registration dongle, to save money on vehicle registration? AFAICT, they don't stack.
Or they can just do what Georgia does and charge an insane yearly fee from non-gas vehicles. GA charges 29.10 cent gas tax, and my Model Y "Alternative Fuel Vehicle Fee" is $210 yearly. I would need to buy an equivalent 721 gallons of gas yearly to match that fee, which is over 20k miles a year on a gas car (assuming 30mpg).
There has to be a better way to tax road usage. I pay extra for my EV as well, but I suppose the state’s argument is that the odometer reading could include mileage in other states. But that would still benefit your home state… so I don’t know.
My state requires a check for all vehicles older than 4 years which includes a obd2 scan, so they probably already have this data
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.
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.
you know most SUVs are really sedans with tall cabins? All crossovers are sedan unibody chassis. Here is a list of truck SUVs, which have actual frames.
They should like the idea: when properly designed, EVs don't weight more than ICE peers.
Take the latest Model 3 Performance: 4054 pounds, 296 miles on a charge. The 2024 BMW M3? 3840 pounds.
The Tesla beats the BMW on every metric and has plenty of range. Yet, it weighs less than 5% more than the BMW hybrid.
You can also compare the standard Model 3 with the 3 series, or the Model Y with the X3. Weigh is not an issue any more and specific energy of new batteries keep getting better. We're only started.
GM cuts ties with 2 data firms amid heated lawsuit over driver data
Published: 1:47 p.m. ET March 22, 2024 Updated: 5:18 p.m. ET March 22, 2024
General Motors said Friday it is severing ties with two data brokers following a lawsuit that connected the automaker to sharing driver data that resulted in higher auto insurance rates for that plaintiff.
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Disclosure: I work for GM, not on this program. I will not be commenting further on this.
Not the only reason why insurance rates are skyrocketing. Cars are expensive and getting more so. Car repair is expensive. Insurers could exert pressure on manufacturers to make cars cheaper, but they are too busy enjoying the profits.
As a DIY shade tree mechanic, I find car repairs are getting cheaper & easier.
New parts are a dog eat dog race to the bottom on margins with more choice than ever, markets for used parts are more liquid than ever and there’s a guide for everything.
I can google some vague OBD code (yes, the car will tell you what’s kinda going on!) with my year/model and someone will have a step-by-step guide on “oh, it’s 99% this $11 part, if not, check that”.
My own experience with an insurance claim after getting rear ended was this: take it to their preferred shop, or we could choose a licensed autobody shop (they would pay $2800), or cut us a cheque for $1900. We took the cheque and our mechanic fixed it for $950.
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.
Add in cars being totaled out a lot easier due to "efficiencies" in manufacturing making the cars disposable and of course rising natural disaster events that flood/burn cars.
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.
At a some point, I did opt into this program with an insurance company in exchange for reduced rates.
Driving was considered “A” rated but eventually opted out. The $10-12 per month saved was not really worth it.
Their tos and privacy policy indicate it would only be used for internal rating and wouldn’t be shared. But wouldn’t be surprised if the data ended up being available to other insurance agencies via a data broker.
I was upset about this invasion of my privacy when I found I had been opted into this program somehow -- I would not have accepted it if I knew what it was. I immediately changed that setting in the GM app then requested my info be deleted from GM. Unfortunately, they've already sold it but at least they won't retain it any longer.
The article doesn't mention that it's illegal to use this data for insurance in California, happily. Hopefully more governments take that lead. It's fine if people knowingly opt into some insurance program (say), but tricking people into giving away their data for free in a way that they wouldn't benefit from should absolutely be illegal.
I think you're being overly optimistic here. Your data is already out there, and it's reasonable to assume it was not entirely deleted by each organization that got hold of it. There is no way to be sure, really.
What's more, companies face little to no repercussions for breaking the law. Most often than not fines are just a fraction of the profit they make off illegal activities.
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.
That's a strongly-worded article! But practically speaking, what can consumers (or consumer orgs) do to fight back? Can I look under the dash, rip out an offending component and stomp on it until it's a pile of shattered debris? Can I hire a hacker to put in workarounds and disable the snitching apps?
If the industry have their way, it will soon become illegal to drive without connected telemetry continuously reporting back.
And yes, there are such great, positive uses for this type of technology. We could use the logged data to create individual drivers' profiles, and with this, curate personalized guides and training to help them become better drivers. Gamify the experience to give positive feedback and hand out useless awards of Best Driver In Mocktown or whatever.
It's a bad faith argument. I'm not as familiar with the other markets, but this would mean avoiding all Japanese cars. Which is a bad idea if you also want a reliable car and/or value.
I'm just familiar with the data collection and the flow of data to insurance companies for JDM cars. A quick look at an EFF article and you should probably also avoid every car manufacturer.
Toyota Motor Insurance Services, Inc. (TMIS) collects the data from Subaru, Mazda, and Toyota. I don't believe Honda does, looks like they go through a different data broker. TMIS also gives the data to other companies that create metrics and ML models for insurance companies.
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.
It's hard for me to imagine needing a new car. There will be suitable older used cars available for a long time still. When there isn't anymore, I'll work out a different plan.
I agree with you that the law is the right way to address these issues, but until then I'm on my own.
They already are. For lots of cars, a quick web search will get you instruction for how to disable the car's ability to phone home. As time goes on, I expect more and more cars will have such instructions.
That's pretty much my backup plan for when the day comes that even used cars include this stuff. But until then, it's easier for me to stick with used cars that don't require modification.
This is my problem. We have 2 cars, a 2006 and a 2007. The time will come when we have to replace them. Right now I'm just hoping that industries like crate engines take off before that happens, because I don't personally believe consumer protection laws will work.
You don't think there is tracking text or geo information that can identify you've had a convo with your friend and are going for a ride? That they can't identify acceleration habits between two people? It doesn't have to be perfect, its not like they're going to tell you how it works.
> GM (and some apologists) will of course proclaim that this is only fair that reckless drivers pay more
God it's like the author is intentionally trying to make me not give half a shit about this.
It IS fair for reckless drivers to pay more! What the fuck? How would that not be fair?
If you care about spying, please talk about the problems with spying in a way that doesn't involve people being freely able to do things that endanger the lives of others.
Surely there was a less insane angle to attack this from? But maybe I'm just an apologist.
Wreckless drivers should pay less. Wreckful drivers should pay more...
A big problem here is lack of consent. It's one thing to add an insurance surveilance device to your vehicle, it's another for it to be built in and not specifically agreed to.
Another big problem is lack of transparency: we don't always know what they're tracking.
Another big problem is (most likely) lack of understanding of the scene. You can't tell from one car's sensors if the driving was appropriate, IMHO. Maybe someone with a lot of hard braking should drive differently, but if they haven't had any collissions and have a long history, it smells of 'pre-crime' to charge them more for something they didn't do.
> 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.
> it smells of 'pre-crime' to charge them more for something they didn't do
Ignoring the fact that reckless endangerment is an actual crime and thing they did, not "something they didn't do", it is also probabilistically the thing that leads to collision damage. 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.
> 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 totally is. The problem is that what constitutes reckless driving is a black box established and controlled by the very same entity that charges you for that.
I read a comment on HN some time ago about using sudden deceleration to identify reckless driving, and how that mistakenly flagged drivers for avoiding other people's reckless behavior.
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.
What is a reckless driver? Before you answer that, consider that you only have access to the vehicle sensors to make that determination. Can you? “Oh, they routinely exceed the speed limit.” The speed limit, which is set by a small town on the way to a tourist destination intended to ensnare people from outside the state. “They corner too quickly.” What is too quickly? At minimum, if they and the vehicle survived the maneuver, it’s within the operating envelope of the vehicle. “Fast acceleration.” There’s an on-ramp near my house that is, by universal agreement of the townspeople, too short (and on a curve too!). You must accelerate like you’re getting launched off an aircraft carrier in order to safely merge.
Without context, it’s impossible for a “sloppy AI” to make judgements based on telemetry alone about the quality of the driver.
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...
So driving around a private race track is reckless driving (something that should the person have a wreck doing, their insurance would not cover)?
This is a question of informed consent and due process. Of course we should do everything we can to prevent [bad thing] but within a system of constraints (e.g. laws, rights, etc.). Why don’t manufacturers put a big sticker on the window of their cars saying that all your driving information would be sold to auto insurers, potentially resulting in higher insurance premiums? Because they would sell less cars (or people would buy cars that don’t do this) - so instead they do it surreptitiously.
So at the end of the of the day you just have to ask yourself if you an “ends justify the means” type of person…
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.
Building on top of this, many states limit how much increases can be, which makes it difficult for insurers to respond to quickly changes market forces like we saw in COVID.
Labor + Parts became so much more expensive but coverage costs were unable to be increased.
Sounds like the car insurance companies should have taken out policies for sudden events beyond their control.
Other types of insurance companies do so; For example, State Farm might take out a policy to backstop their cash reserves where the terms are if they exceed over $100million in claims in a 2 week period of time.
This doesn't really have anything to do with the question. It's not about the gradual increase of rates over time generally, it's about relative rates due to behavior tracking.
If reckless driving can increase insurance premiums relative to others while ideal driving has no effect on your relative premium, it's just a naked money grab. All downside means drivers should be against it.
This was the question. A huge chunk of a lot of people's insurance isn't the insurance to fix your car, it is to fix the other guy's car. If the average cost to fix the other guy's car keeps going up, your insurance will end up going up given a fixed risk level.
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
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.
This has a VERY simple fix - get a new insurance company. Most companies slowly raise rates on customers who don't shop around. I'd actually recommend most people get at least one insurance quote at least every other year.
Every time my rates go up by a non-trivial amount I get some quotes from other companies and I'm always able to lower my cost for comparable insurance by at least 20%. I'm paying less for car insurance than I was 10 years ago and I've raised my coverage significantly.
It's really that easy if you don't have any tickets or claims.
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.
I'm certain the parent poster was describing a situation where the reckless driver could have used the passing lane on the left, but chose to pass on the right. Passing on the right is fine when the passing lane is blocked.
If I'm doing 75 in the middle lane along with traffic, and somebody behind me in the middle lane wants to do 95, I'm not obligated to move into the slow vehicle lane.
They can pass on the left, in the passing lane. They are not entitled to pass on the right on the slow vehicle lane.
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.
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)!
I'm being passed by SUVs going 85 mph. My speed has nothing to do with whether or not other people are recklessly and aggressively driving huge, unwieldy death machines.
You should only pay more if you cause actual damages. Even people who drive carefully can cause accidents. This is punishing people before they have caused a problem, and it is wrong.
People shouldn't have their data sold without consent to any third party. In fact, they shouldn't have their data collected by any party involved without consent. If the insurance companies want to offer those tracking devices that change your rates up and down - that's fair game, otherwise they should shove off.
"Consent" given through fine print isn't actually consent in any meaningful use of the word. The law doesn't agree, and that's a problem.
I don't think a standard EULA really addresses the issue. A big part of the issue is that for consent to be meaningful, you need to be informed clearly and completely exactly what you're being asked to consent to, including exactly how your data will be used and who it will be shared with.
It would be hard to standardize that. I don't think I've ever seen a EULA the actually gave the information needed for informed consent.
Seems like the EU is getting pretty close to how it should be: You need to inform the user about the potential data being collected and then get affirmative consent from the user that is not baked into requirements to use the product.
The live entertainment industry had an interesting solution: the standard rider. You can put whatever nonsense you want in the contract, but the standard rider spells out what is important to the buyer (and the rider is controlling). It could be that as a condition of agreement to the sales contract, the seller agrees to the buyer’s rider that includes privacy protection and liability for the sale of data.
It's only fair if you pay less if not a reckless driver. If insurance companies pocket that money and continue to charge you more then it's a grift.
However, the spying on you part is problematic. You can be flagged as reckless driver (even if you're not) with no recourse or knowledge as of why, it's an algo so go figure. And when insurance companies need more revenue they'll tweak the algo even more.
You missed the end of the sentence, and the following sentence: your quote misrepresents what the author was saying.
> GM (and some apologists) will of course proclaim that this is only fair that reckless drivers pay more, but that’s generally not how it works. Pressured for unlimited quarterly returns, insurance companies will use absolutely anything they find in the data to justify rising rates.
Okay, now do the service bays that sell your odometer reading and service history to CarFax.
I had State Farm call me up and say I was exceeding the 10,000 miles per year in my plan so the rate was going up. The car had no telemetry - the dealer sold the data and SF picked it up.
The kicker is that I hadn't even gone 10,000 miles yet. They extrapolated the number from an early oil change.
"Pissed off" is a pretty common phrase in US English to mean being angry. We tend to not use the other varieties of "pissed" that British and other English speakers would use though. Some examples would be "being pissed" (being drunk) or "taking the piss" (mocking someone).
Yeah, that's how uncommon it is; I don't even know the right form. Pissed to mean drunk is like depends on your friend group? There's people who might say "i got pissed last night" and I'd be like what were you mad about? But other people I'd accept it as an indication of drinking...
That’s not how insurance rates work but okay I see the populist rage appeal of the headline and usually that gets loose with facts.
Edit: to clarify, overall rates are set based on the aggregate loss of the overall customer base in each state plus some profit margin. This is the whole pie.
Driver characteristics like the car data is used to segment those rates on the individual level so each is a different sized piece of pie but one slice being bigger means another’s are smaller.
The actual effect of driving data shouldn’t impact the average rate, only the individual rate with individual increases balanced by individual decreases.
So the headline would be just as accurate if it said the sharing is reducing rates.
That’s how it works. But yes, not having the data sharing opt-in is unethical.
The actual reasons rates are sky rocketing is inflation and increased accident rates.
Anyway, care to point out what’s wrong about this comment or is it the standard shoot the messenger type deal?
Adjacent to this, in my state I can save ~ $200 on my EV registration if I plug in a tracking dongle to read mileage. For some reason, just reading the odometer difference is not enough.
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