
Car Insurers Find Tracking Devices Are a Tough Sell - shahryc
http://www.wsj.com/articles/car-insurers-find-tracking-devices-are-a-tough-sell-1452476714
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klenwell
Once interviewed with a company writing the web interface for users with these
devices.

Them: So as you can see here, we have a user in Florida who had 3 hard brakes
and an excess speed reading in the past month.

Me: Interesting.

Them: Ooops. Clicked wrong button. She's going to have reset her password next
time she logs in.

Me: That was an actual user?

Them: Yes, that's the live system.

They told me they were popular with drivers looking for a discount with online
insurers.

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542458
There's a lot of pessimism ITT, but I'd like to say: As a new driver, I love
these things. I started off with a multi-thousand insurance bill yearly, even
with the cheapest insurance I could find. This is simply because I am young,
male, and had to buy my own car - I don't think the insurance company was
screwing me over, I'm just a high-risk demographic.

However, I'm a fairly cautious driver - why should I have to pay for the
indiscretions of other people in my demographic? I signed up for a UBI program
and received a device that tracks

* How long I drive over 120km/h

* When I drive

* How often I brake hard

I don't consider this a huge breach of my privacy, and it has saved me over
$5000 so far. If it required GPS my tune might change, but across 3 different
insurance companies I've never seen a program like that. Maybe if I had the
luxury of belonging to a low-risk demographic I would be more sensitive, but
for people like me these programs are a godsend.

(Full disclosure: I have not read the linked article due to paywall)

~~~
nipponese
I know it feels really rad and smart when we see this headlines and say
"finally Americans are waking up to privacy conerns!!!11!", but the mere
existence of such a headline only indicates Americans' growing apathy to
digital footprint of any kind. And for good reason: if Skynet/Matrix/Hal were
close to such a self-awareness, we would have already solved some pretty legit
issues (e.g., poverty, greed, insecurity, life, etc.).

~~~
ccvannorman
That is the most optimistic outlook on the AI apocalypse I have ever heard.

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gaius
True story, last night I was driving on the motorway, just cruising at about
60mph. "You are breaking the speed limit!" my GPS announced. She thought I was
on a 30mph limit road that runs parallel for a bit, about 50ft to the left. Do
I want my car snitching on me to the insurance company or the po-po? Not a
chance I will ever risk getting a tracking device fitted.

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zubiaur
Where I live car insurance is very comprehensive and one of biggest reasons
why people insure their cars is as protection for theft.

For the most popular cars, the ones at higher risk of being stolen, tracking
is mandatory. All insurance companies require it, otherwise they won't insure
your car.

So, with the justification of a higher risk and by acting in a coordinated
manner, peruvian insurance companies (4 which control the market) have
effectively deployed a vast tracking network.

Don't know if something similar could happen in the US, there are too many
insurance companies as to easily establish common policies across the board
and I suspect that it would be harder to come up with a credible justification
for it.

~~~
nroets
Over the last 2 decades, technology has secured many products from common
criminals. Think of Internet banking or the authentication provided by mobile
phone SIM cards.

Yet cars theft is still surprisingly common. Why is that ?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Because car manufacturers are idiots who, in the race for the most "ooh,
shiny" features don't appear to understand what "improvements" are actually
useful and appreciated. If you look at many of the nice features on an S-class
Mercedes, for instance, they're neither expensive nor technologically
advanced, yet other car manufacturers don't see them as selling points. E.g.
the ability to get cold air in your face and warm air on your feet
simultaneously. Or the tiny fabric flap between the driver's seat and the
central console that stops stuff from your pocket falling down into that hard-
to-reach gap.

To wit: look at the amplifier attacks that got hundreds of Range Rovers stolen
in London last year [1]. Is the tiny effort saved in not getting the keys out
of your pocket worth a 50x increase in the chance of your car being stolen?
And the subsequent large increase in insurance premiums? Most reasonable
people would say "No".

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/oct/27/thieves-
range-r...](http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/oct/27/thieves-range-rover-
keyless-locking)

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richardw
I have one and don't mind at all. My insurance company is also my health-
insurance provider and would know immediately if I have an accident, so they'd
call me and if no answer would send help automatically. If my car is stolen,
they can track it. They have a clause that prevents them from using the data
against me in e.g. an accident claim. I get up to 50% of my fuel cost back
monthly if I drive well and e.g. check my tire condition yearly (although
linked to household insurance as well). I have friends with fast cars that
wouldn't touch this and that's fine - keeps my premiums down because I'm not
subsidizing their behavior.

I'd rather have them tracking me than my Android device, say:

[https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

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HiLo
"And here is the Apple Watch that tells us every time you smoke a cigarette,
or think something shameful. Healthy mind healthy body."

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guan
I wonder if one way to make better use of this data is to restrict what detail
the insurance company can see. For example, you could imagine an arrangement
where a third party vendor subject to strict controls gets the raw data and
produces summarized scores, for example the frequency of hard brakes.
Insurance companies would then only see these summaries, which could be
challenged by customers, and can only vary premiums based on the summaries.

~~~
TulliusCicero
So basically the automobile equivalent of credit reports/scores?

~~~
guan
When you apply for a loan in the US, most lenders these days will only look at
your credit score(s), but they also have access to the full credit report and
will sometimes have a credit analyst look at the report manually and form a
judgment. So this would be like a scheme where the lender/insurer would only
have access to scores, and not the full report.

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jonnathanson
At the risk of sounding cynical: how long before the insurance providers lobby
the government to make these trackers mandatory because they enforce "safety?"

~~~
throwwit
I wonder if the data can already be sold from cellphone carriers.

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JeffreyKaine
Someone should build an insurance company for Teslas. Build it as a Tesla app
connected to the log data. No need for creepy trackers, they're already built
in ;)

~~~
kylec
Honestly, the tracking is the biggest thing that would stop me from getting a
Tesla. Is it possible to completely sever the data connection for the car?

~~~
mesozoic
So you don't get critical updates and your car blows up.

~~~
spdionis
OR you don't get updates and your car is the only one that doesn't blow up.

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CyberDildonics
Sell my privacy for a tiny discount of giving away money and getting nothing
in return? Sign me up.

~~~
andylei
you get a discount on insurance

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ekianjo
until they make it mandatory and then the discount will be as good as gone.

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dietrichepp
The discount is partly there because tracking makes it cheaper for them to
insure you, because they can estimate risk better. The better you are at
estimating risk, the narrower your margins can be.

~~~
trengrj
Consumers don't win however if they are judged as now higher risk (which
should be approximately half of them).

~~~
dietrichepp
Consumers on average win, because average rates go down, because insurers have
better estimates of risk. Or do you think that the good drivers should
subsidize the dangerous ones? (Privacy issues aside.)

~~~
ekianjo
I don't agree. The trends of insurers is to cover less and less and to raise
their premiums as soon as they can. They are clearly profit maximizers, not
"consumer-centric" organizations at all. Just like banks.

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jlgaddis
Good. I hope this idea dies quickly.

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plorg
My brother recently got one of these on his car, but he found he really didn't
save anything by having it. Based simply on the amount of time driving during
"peak hours", namely rush hour/when everyone is leaving work, he lost any
discount he was pitched by the insurance company. This isn't really anything
he has any control over.

In that case he seems to be getting a snow job from an insurance company that
is using the the idea of quantified self/living to seize a larger part of its
customers' lives, likely without really paying them back anything for the
intrusion.

~~~
neogodless
Similar to my own experience. For the first 6 months, I got a 10% discount
just for having it. But immediately after that, the discount dropped to just
1% - regardless of how little I exceeded 80 mph (never) and how little I hard
braked (once or twice a week at first, once or twice a month once I got a feel
for where it detected braking) - it didn't matter. I was "grade A" for those
categories, but C- for distance. Anything over 7500 miles per year basically
removed any chance for a discount.

Now that I live much closer to my job, I could probably qualify, but I also
found a little stressful to always be worrying about maybe triggering the
"hard braking."

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rmason
If car insurers want to make them an easy sell try solving a harder problem
than just small discounts. Register a car in the city of Detroit and your
insurance rate goes up 200-300%.

How about a device that you can activate from your cell phone that not only
tracks your car but actually shuts it down? People would be creeped out by
tracking but if you can save 70% on your insurance and at the same time more
likely save your car from the chop shops it would be a win for everyone. Then
have a private service that retrieves the cars so the police can work on more
serious crimes.

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tabloid
These devices would be easier to swallow if you could view the data that's
being collected, knew how your score is being calculated, and had a chance to
appeal errors/anomalies.

~~~
sambeau

      "These devices would be easier to swallow"
    

Don't give them ideas.

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Animats
From the article:

 _" Smartphones have made Americans more comfortable with location tracking."_

" _Privacy already has shifted from being a right to a good that is purchased.
"_

Right.

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dsfyu404ed
This article touched on the fact that additional information these sensors
provide is interpreted in a traditional context.

"Early company surveys of people’s interest in usage-based insurance revealed
that about 40% of people had a viewpoint that was some variation on “No way in
hell.”

followed by

"Progressive concluded Snapshot was overestimating the potential for accidents
from midnight to 4 a.m. driving on week nights, and now considers late-night
driving to be high-risk only on weekends."

That's why people don't want to tell their insurance company anything more
than the minimum. The insurance companies thought driving at night was risky
and it wasn't until they had snapshot telling them that just because someone
works 3rd shift isn't an inherently higher risk did they not pull their head
out of their butt. So now, via snapshot they can offer competitive rates to
people on 3rd shift whereas before they'd just have jacked the rates on the
few that were unlucky enough to file a claim for something happening in the
evening. Um, hooray?

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neogodless
Hard-braking: A+ Speed: A+ Peak risk hours: A+ Distance: C-

Because I drove over 7500 miles per year, I got the minimum discount (1%) -
apparently experience decreases skill level ;)

As soon as the initial 6 month 10% discount was reduced to 1%, I dropped the
device.

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SixSigma
In the UK these are being pushed as a smartphone app

