
Insurers Know How Often American Drivers Touch Their Phones - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/insurers-know-exactly-how-often-american-drivers-touch-their-phones
======
sib
I wish the journalist had asked more about this seemingly alarming statistic:

"Zendrive now has its monitoring technology on 60 million phones, roughly one
of every four U.S. drivers"

For example: How did this "monitoring technology" get on 60M phones? Do the
owners know it's there? Is it hidden in other apps? Is there clear disclosure
of its existence in those apps? What is done with this data? Who has access?
Is it anonymized? Is it sold to third parties? Is it used for advertising or
other non-safety-related purposes? How do they distinguish between drivers and
passengers? What do they do about COPPA if it's on the phone of an
under-13-year-old? Etc.

~~~
redwards510
Indeed! Unless this is a part of Google Maps, Waze, Uber, or Lyft, some
extremely popular app on our phones is doing location and activity monitoring
no one was aware of. It's especially frightening because this data could be
used to deny people reasonable insurance rates in the future and they weren't
even aware they were being logged.

I'm curious how they know a person is definitely driving and not a passenger.

~~~
rubyfan
As a matter of practicality using this data adversely against customers is
unlikely.

1\. This is literally almost everyone on the road (that should frighten you
more than insurance companies having this data)

2\. Insurance is a highly regulated industry. Each state has a department of
insurance that regulates how insurers apply rate and underwriting.

3\. There are many voluntary opt-in programs out there that reward good
behavior and marginally penalize bad behavior. Those programs focus on a few
behaviors, none of which are distraction at the moment and they are all opt-
in.

Full disclosure - I work at a large insurance company and am also an EFF
donor. This is near and dear.

~~~
drb91
Honestly they could start by building voice controls that people want to use
rather than the voice assistant bullshit. Idk what the google one is like, but
siri is a toy.

~~~
toss1
The Google assistant is sort of ok while it works, but it often fails in the
most critical situation.

E.g., "OK Google, Call Home".

nothing.

Why? Because it is telling you, usually with a silent on-screen notification
that you need to unlock your phone.

I have found that trying several times including swearing seems to unlock it.

But this is still creating a distraction while driving.

Very poorly thought out.

~~~
RhodesianHunter
It's not that it's poorly thought out, it's that speech-to-text is just ok,
and deriving meaning from even perfect text is _hard_.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Dragon Dictate
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking))
worked on less capable hardware 20 years ago and didn't need to be online to
do it so how come voice recognition is so bad now.

You don't even need general purpose speech recognition to call someone on your
mobile, just enough to recognize a trigger sound and the name of the person
you want to call. This is how I could use voice recognition on my Nokia N73 to
call anyone in my address book.

~~~
atoav
As I understood it the hard thing isn’t converting speech to text, it is
understanding which text should lead to which actions.

Strangely enough in command line interfaces this works perfectly, so maybe we
need just a more speech friendly way to call commands?

And why you’d need the cloud is beyond me. A speech assistent that fails once
you don’t have a internet connection is not only annoying, in some cases it
could become outright dangerous.

~~~
krageon
With a limited set of commands and fairly strict user training, you reduce
this problem to "parsing a limited grammar" which is significantly easier.
It's more or less what the current top-tier chatbots are doing. You don't need
an outrageous amount of processing power for this.

The reason everything currently runs "in the cloud" is very simple; it binds
you to the vendor and prevents anyone from reverse-engineering the software in
any sort of usable form. It's essentially DRM gone wild.

------
bigiain
Just bin case anyone needs a datapoint on whether or not Zendrive is a creepy
data mining and privacy-invasive kind of company...

When I went to their website, I was soon greeted with a chatbot that asked":

"Welcome $myCompanyName! What brought you here to check us out?"

I've never visited them before. I'm at an office that shares an internet
facing IP address with another company (I might go ask one of them to visit
the site, to see if they've just linked that IP address to the company I work
for, or if they're even creepier than that...)

Sneaking a look in dev tools is _interesting_...

[https://js.driftt.com/embeds/1556584410000/w8e7my5ng92y.json](https://js.driftt.com/embeds/1556584410000/w8e7my5ng92y.json)

Looks like they're specifically targeting 18 companies with tailored messages
and CTAs.

~~~
x0x0
That data is essentially sourced from clearbit afaik.

I'm _really_ interested in who is selling it; I've been puzzling over this for
a while. Lots of companies have high accuracy employer to IP address data like
that -- think GSuite, Office 365, etc -- but who on earth has an incentive to
sell it? In the case of GSuite, google keeps data like that for itself. For
Office365, the value of the data pales next to the $100/year/user they charge.

One guess is maybe the Adobe suite? Still, I kind of think this would be too
sleazy for them.

~~~
bigiain
That's familiar...

There's a call to:
[https://customer.api.drift.com/targeting/enrichment/clearbit](https://customer.api.drift.com/targeting/enrichment/clearbit)

That returns a json payload with a big hash of "conditions" with encoded-
looking keys...

(And "too sleazy for _Adobe_"? That's something I thought I'd never hear...)

~~~
x0x0
Drift is open about where they're sourcing the data. Well, openish. See eg

[https://gethelp.drift.com/hc/en-
us/articles/360019504314-Cle...](https://gethelp.drift.com/hc/en-
us/articles/360019504314-Clearbit-Integration)

Let me walk back that "too sleazy for Adobe" \-- too sleazy for my guess for
the $ on offer. The money probably is not large; maybe low to mid 6 figures
tops. That type of money probably can't even get you a callback from a BD
person at Adobe; they don't get out of bed for under a million dollars.

~~~
bigiain
Maybe LinkedIn? There's whiffs of them in the network tab of dev tools. Same
with Facebook...

------
gbrown
Are they accounting for carpooling/passengers? I drive into work with my wife
every morning, and often check my phone en-route while she's driving.

This is an important problem, but ham fisted solutions which invade privacy
are not the answer. We need better regulation of this stuff.

~~~
mikepurvis
We already have regulations. It's not working.

I'm perfectly content for a phone to detect via GPS/IMU that it's in a moving
vehicle and send up a big angry prompt like "Please confirm that you are a
passenger and not driving this vehicle. Phone interactions are being logged
and will be available to law enforcement if a collision occurs."

I say this as a bike commuter who sees phones being used at stoplights every
day, and as a parent of kids who walk to school. But also has a driver who
occasionally fiddles with Google Maps on the road and could use the reminder
myself.

~~~
tasty_freeze
> I say this as a bike commuter who sees phones being used at stoplights every
> day

Why is this a problem? I don't mess with my phone while I'm driving, but if
I'm sitting at a light for a minute or two, I'll take a peek if, say, a text
message came in while I was moving, just to make sure it isn't something
important from my wife or daughter.

~~~
rootusrootus
Well, when I'm behind someone fiddling with their phone and it takes them an
extra five seconds to start moving (and only because I beeped my horn to
prompt them to look up), I think it's a problem. We're all trying to get to
our destinations safely and quickly. This means traffic has to flow, or we all
sit around longer getting more aggravated about it.

~~~
mikepurvis
This is a fair sentiment, but I'm much more concerned about the safety
implications than the inconvenience caused by a five second delay. The same
delay can come from lots of legitimate sources— weather conditions, road work,
delaying passing a cyclist because there isn't room to give the full meter,
stopping for a schoolbus, whatever. When we're in a mindset that the smallest
delay is intolerable, it becomes harder to be patient in the cases where
slowing your vehicle is actually the safer choice (which, of course, is most
of them).

------
blocke
Surveillance of 60 million devices? Do the users all know?

[https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ride-
ha...](https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ride-hailing-
safety-20160526-snap-story.html)

"The company doesn't work directly with services such as Uber and Lyft, but a
number of apps, such as Sherpashare (which is primarily used by ride-hailing
drivers for services like Uber and Lyft), HopSkipDrive, eDriving and a variety
of navigation apps use Zendrive's technology to monitor ride safety."

Hurray for malware. What other apps is this hiding in?

------
xattt
The article doesn’t seem to make the distinction between direct cell phone use
and that done through an car-specific UI like Android Auto or CarPlay.

Will I be charged more for my insurance for selecting a podcast?

Why am I not charged more for changing the climate controls through a
touchscreen UI that might require the same level of attention?

~~~
whenchamenia
I honestly think any control you cannot manipulate by touch alone, while
keeping your eyes on the should be banned within the drivers reach.

------
monksy
> Zendrive now has its monitoring technology on 60 million phones,

How do they have their surveillance tech on so many phones? Do people know
that's what's going on?

------
zarriak
It should be treated in the same class as driving while drinking. If you are
in an accident that involved your phone usage you have to put your phone in a
box before you can start your car or some similar mechanism to the in car
breathalyzer.

I am the only person in my family I know that doesn't use my phone while
driving. Something I don't think has been addressed here is that there is much
less social pressure on people to not use phones while driving. Nobody would
let someone drive a car if they knew they are drunk but many people allow
others to use their phone while being the driver.

~~~
brainlessdev
In Spain the fine for drunk driving between 0.25 and 0.50 is the same as the
fine for driving while on the phone: 600€ + 6 points off your driver's
license.

I find that appropriate.

------
argd678
When will American cities prioritize good public transportation? It would be
interesting to see what the differences are compared to cities that do, such
as Singapore, Vienna and London.

~~~
el_don_almighty
Never

~~~
logfromblammo
I disagree. It will be when Ford and GM go bankrupt, and when foreign-owned
auto manufacturers forget how US lobbying works.

Then wait for about 40 years as the people in power continue to do things
exactly as they had been done before, just because no one ever got fired for
keeping the applecart upright. _Then_ the US will go all in on public
transportation and walkable urban centers.

------
mschuster91
While the data itself is valuable and shows worrying trends, its collection
makes me even more worried.

If this trend of us collecting datapoints for every muscle twitch continues,
we will not be needing a "right to not incriminate oneself" any more, our
devices will be the ultimate provers of our guilt. We sign off our freedom
for... what? 10 bucks a month savings in car insurance and "you're a Captain
Picard!" in a facebook "which Trek character are you" dumbass quiz?

------
macintux
> The call ended abruptly when Balakrishnan—talking on a hands-free system—was
> rear-ended at a red light.

So the expert was doing something that has been demonstrated to be nearly as
distracting.

I am very skeptical of this recent study. Yes, it’s good that drivers are
looking forward instead of at their laps, but a good driver is looking all
around and making risk calculations about people and cars not directly in
front of them.

[https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2019/02/020519-vtti-
handsfree...](https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2019/02/020519-vtti-
handsfreestudy.html)

------
cjensen
As a society, we've already dealt with an experience that is "addictive" where
people "can't help themselves": drunk driving.

Societal pressure plus draconian penalties has put an end to omnipresent drunk
driving. The same will work for distracted driving... but only if society
decides to take action.

~~~
leetcrew
or we could try a less authoritarian approach and work to improve technologies
like android auto and apple carplay that allow drivers to take advantage of
the useful features of their phones without taking their eyes off the road.

~~~
acdha
Have you used any of those on a car which didn’t require using a touchscreen
while driving? I have boggled at recent rentals after seeing how far car UIs
have regressed over the last decade – so many things require you to move your
hands to controls which cannot be used without looking, are extremely fiddly,
or pull your attention away from the road.

Toss in the studies showing that handsfree usage doesn’t lower the distraction
factor and I’m wondering whether the answer is banning anything short of a
full HUD and that only for navigation.

~~~
leetcrew
I personally don't find it that bad to have to hit the voice command button on
screen a couple of times per drive. for me it's once to start navigation and
once to start my music, both of which I can do before leaving my parking
space. it's a valid point though, touchscreen UIs are inherently less safe in
a car, imo. bmw/mercedes/audi have much better controls where you can control
all the systems through a wheel/paddle near the gearshifter but I'm not sure
whether they are hooked up to android auto or carplay. in any case, all I'm
really arguing is that it isn't _that_ hard to devise a system that's as safe
or safer than operating an old school radio. as I argue in a different post,
having real-time traffic info is a huge win for safety. I would prefer to see
that approach tried at scale before we jack up punishments or create a
pervasive surveillance system.

~~~
acdha
I think the problem is that most manufacturers don’t want to spend time on
good UI. I got a 2019 Ford earlier and it was like “hit the voice button, say
something, wait, use the touchscreen to cancel the modal error dialog, try
again, cancel the hilarious misinterpretation, try again, …”. I am unsurprised
that people use the phone directly since the only thing which worked at all
well was the sound output and Google maps display.

If it were up to me I’d ban touchscreens in the front row: voice or, better,
buttons & knobs with distinct tactile feel, and the display has to be the same
level as the instrument console and limited to navigation & basic info
display. I think that’d avoid a lot of crashes but I imagine it’d get too much
negative reaction until the toll of distracted driving is widely recognized,
just as drunk driving took many years of awareness.

~~~
leetcrew
I don't disagree with anything you say here. tactile buttons with a quality
screen isn't just safer, it's a better experience. I doubt people would miss
the touchscreens for long.

------
munificent
Smartphones are the cigarettes of this generation — expensive, addictive,
unhealthy, and heavily pushed by big business.

Thirty years from now, people will look back on this time and wonder what the
hell we were thinking. (The answer, of course, is that we weren't, because we
were too distracted by our phones to do so.)

~~~
jrockway
You can look at comics from the past and see what people of the time thought
the big problem was. In the 80s, walkmans were going to be the death of
humanity. In the 1900s, people reading the newspaper instead of talking to
random strangers around them was going to be the death of humanity.

The common thread is that people do not like being bored, but some boring
things are required each day. We filled the idle time with newspapers, music,
and now reading newspapers and listening to music on our phones. It's nothing
new. I am not worried.

The underlying problem is that commute times are too long for people to remain
attentive to the mind-numbingly boring task of driving. That is what we should
focus on fixing.

------
yumraj
One more reason to run your own VPN with something like PiHole to monitor,
connect your phone to this VPN, and then block all shitty traffic like this.

Since this might be in Uber and Lyft apps, I wonder if disabling those apps
till I need them will solve this issue.

However, in _n_ -years time, when all insurance companies will start using
this data openly and stupid politicians will pass laws to allow this, what
will happen to all the privacy conscious people, will they even be able to buy
insurance as reasonable rates?

------
davidw
I hope they do and I hope they do something about it. Distracted driving is a
really bad idea, and you should not be touching your phone while you are
driving.

~~~
starpilot
How do I stop? I'm full-on addicted.

~~~
superkuh
This recent trend of calling everything addictive and normalizing this misuse
is not only stupid but also dangerous to society at large. Addiction is a
serious thing with a well defined meaning. By applying it to things that are
just actually rewarding, as opposed to things that hijack the reward system
via direct manipulation to skew responses to predicted reward, it creates a
perception of danger.

This perception of danger then allows for the conversation about real issues
that need solutions (usually education) to bottom out and begin calls for the
use of government violence to prevent people from doing what they want.
Encouraging the use of force against people who haven't done any violence or
fraud themselves is a very bad thing.

The circumstances have to justify it. Misuse of the word addiction helps that
false justification.

~~~
munificent
_> Addiction is a serious thing with a well defined meaning._

Yes, and that meaning applies fully to smartphone apps for many people.

 _> By applying it to things that are just actually rewarding, as opposed to
things that hijack the reward system via direct manipulation to skew responses
to predicted reward_

Again, this applies to apps as much as it does to cigarettes. In both cases,
you do get a short-term sensation of reward followed by regret and negative
long-term consequences.

~~~
superkuh
> this applies to apps as much as it does to cigarettes.

How you you say this seriously? You are completely ignoring the direct
biochemical effect of nicotine on the reward prediction system.

A computer application does _NOT_ have this effect.

~~~
RussianCow
This is not true; there have been studies showing that the effects of
smartphone addiction are similar to those of alcohol/drug addiction.[1][2]

[1]: [https://www.androidauthority.com/smartphone-addiction-
drug-6...](https://www.androidauthority.com/smartphone-addiction-drug-642320/)

[2]: [https://www.promisesbehavioralhealth.com/addiction/new-
studi...](https://www.promisesbehavioralhealth.com/addiction/new-studies-
compare-smartphones-cocaine-addiction/)

~~~
Raphmedia
There is a big difference between something that gives you pleasure and then
create a bad habit and an actual addiction.

What you are doing is the equivalent of saying that it's fine to play video
games late because "people are addicted to it". Most people aren't. They
simply have deep rooted bad habits. Playing Flappy Bird every time you commute
isn't an addiction. Wanting to finish your level before logging off isn't
either.

An addiction is when your mind is always focused on the addictive behavior.
You have an urge than can never be fulfilled. It's a shifting goalpost because
your tolerance increases as you spent more and more time attempting to satisfy
the urges. It gets so bad it takes over your life, become more important than
your career and family.

Actual gambling, gaming & internet addictions are life breaking. People die
from it [1][2][3]. Entire families get broken from addiction. People lose
careers over it.

Don't throw the word around haphazardly.

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-
death/inde...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/taiwan-gamer-
death/index.html)

[2]
[https://www.jacksonville.com/news/crime/2011-02-01/story/jac...](https://www.jacksonville.com/news/crime/2011-02-01/story/jacksonville-
mom-who-killed-baby-while-playing-farmville-gets-50-years)

[3]
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm)

~~~
munificent
_> People die from it._

Recall that the article that spawned this discussion is talking about people
using their phone while driving and the subsequent 15% rise in car fatalities
in the past year.

~~~
Raphmedia
Is the increase due to addicted people willingly risking their life an the
lives of the people surrounding them or is it simply a bunch of people with
bad habits living where the issue is not talked about enough? I look at
education and laws around the world for the issue and my jaw often hit the
floor. Either it's not talked about or doing won't get you in any trouble.

Where I live (Eastern Canada) they made it so that first offence is $600.
Second offence double that. If the person is on a probationary licence then
they lose it. Otherwise you lose 5 of your points in the demerits points
system[1]. Repeat offenders lose their licence for up to a month.

They are investigating outright making it a criminal offence because the
population consider the issue a serious one.

Not only are you not allowed to hold a phone you are also not allowed to have
it in a cup holder. You can only use it if attached to the vehicle and for
navigation or vehicle performance analytics features. They have cops driving
in raised unmarked trucks and bus to spot drivers using phones.

We also saw at the same time an increase on government paid TV and radio ads
educating about the issue.

Those measures made it so that according to surveys, "97% of adult Quebecers
consider that distracted driving is a very serious or quite serious problem".

[1] Adults with full licenses have 15, young adult 12 and teens only 8. That
means tha a teen who loses 5 points for having an active phone in the car will
then lose their license for failing to obey a stop sign (-3 pts).

------
jldugger
My commute in SV is entirely surface streets (by design). Since moving here I
have observed what I call the "California stop": at a red light, drivers will
stop 2-3 car lengths behind the next driver. Enough that a clever smart car
driver could comfortably pull into the space.

Every time I see it, the driver is looking down at what I assume is a phone.
They are so eager to get back to their phone they stop the car early.

~~~
jblow
“California stop” is already a reserved term that means something else
(slowing down mostly, but not all the way, at a stop sign).

~~~
sokoloff
We always called that a "California roll", though if someone said "California
stop" to me, I'd assume it was the same thing.

~~~
SilasX
Sorry if too OT, but I'm reminded of AWS's infuriating convention of using
"on-demand" and "spot" instances to mean very different things.

------
Zarath
Just bought car insurance, I asked the woman on the phone when I bought it
"what do you do with this data? Are you selling it?" and she sounded somewhat
incredulous that I would even ask such a thing. I declined even though they
offered up to a 25% discount. I'll admit it was difficult to decline, even for
as much as I care about privacy.

------
Noumenon72
What's good about this is that it might allow a targeted solution (don't
compose long texts or watch movies will driving) instead of taking away
responsible people's ability to add a gas station stop to their trip, glance
at some song lyrics in broad daylight with no traffic, or dictate voice notes
while driving. The sense of responsibility that makes me slow down in bad
conditions and leave a good following gap is plenty well tuned to make me a
safe driver. The rules are needed by an entirely different class of people
with less ability to imagine consequences and estimate risk.

Maybe I do need the rules to protect myself from those people, but I wish
people wouldn't get into this moral panic as though touching a cell phone is
the equivalent of blacking out your windshield.

------
OrgNet
I would have to solve Google's ReCaptcha to be able to read this article...

> We've detected unusual activity from your computer network, To continue,
> please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

------
nateburke
What if the shortest path to widespread societal acceptance self-driving cars
is by quickly making humans _really bad_ drivers?

Making phone-use irresistibly addictive is one such path, I think.

~~~
drb91
We have public transit today!

------
hedora
There was an earlier article (last year?) showing this is a simple feedback
loop that could be fixed with a firmware upgrade to traffic lights:

If a red light sensor sees more than a 2? 5? second gap between cars, it will
immediately switch from green to red.

People using cell phones at the stop light regularly create such gaps.

The gaps mean everyone waita multiple light cycles.

Knowing you will wait multiple light cycles encourages you to use your cell
phone while you wait.

~~~
Noumenon72
In the long term, the incentive of "I must pay close attention to the light or
I will have to wait another cycle" is much more powerful than "I might get
another 15 seconds of phone use if I don't bother looking up from time to
time". People need time to adjust to that weird red light scheme (or it needs
to adjust to allow a longer gap just after turning green).

------
StanislavPetrov
This is a completely misleading headline. The headline should be: "Insurers
know how often Americans who voluntarily choose to carry spy-phones ("smart
phones") are to look at their spy-phones while driving".

What's worse is that many people in the comment section of this article seem
to be surprised that they are being tracked by the tracking devices they
choose to carry.

------
muckrakerz
Using your radio has been shown to be just as distracting or more distracting
yet we allow that. Their is no data presented in the article that shows any
even attempted casualty. For example, they note that usage of devices is up
and yet fatalities are down: [https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/us-dot-
announces-2017-r...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/us-dot-
announces-2017-roadway-fatalities-down)

And lest anyone claim this is due to safety items like advanced airbags, that
same article shows _pedestrian_ fatalities are also down.

Now this could be for a host of factors. But the article isn't anything other
than a scare fest and a reminder that anyone from FB talking about potential
privacy issues should be shamed into silence.

------
peterhadlaw
I'd love to add this to an on phone blocker like Blockada [0] (tl;dr local VPN
based HOSTS blocking app). Does anyone know if there's a) a way to verify that
this SDK is installed on my phone and b) if it's using a shared / single set
of hostnames for reporting so that they can be blocked?

0: [https://blokada.org/index.html](https://blokada.org/index.html)

------
gnicholas
Is there a chance that my insurance company's app is tracking this? Presumably
an iOS app can't access accelerometer data when it isn't open (and it rarely
is).

------
fmajid
Gee, an insurance company asks people whether they drive safely, gets wildly
optimistic responses, and concludes people have poor self-assessment. It's
certainly possible (Dunning-Kruger syndrome) but a more likely explanation is
they simply lie to avoid a possible rise in their premiums.

------
lobster45
What about passengers? My phone is always asking me if I’m driving for example
when I’m trying to use Waze as a passenger

------
elchief
I got a nice phone holder and use Android Auto and "Ok Google" and barely
touch my phone now

------
gesman
How to prevent shady mobile apps and SDKs to communicate with unauthorized
data collection portals?

------
nerdbaggy
If anybody wants to check their logs it seems the hostname are:

\- api-gateway.zendrive.com

\- api.zendrive.com

\- sdk-api.zendrive.com

------
mrobot
How do they know this?

~~~
weka
> The reason for all this data is that at least one in five U.S. auto
> insurance policies now offers a potential discount if the customer consents
> to a vehicle monitor.

