> Lastly, does your insurance shoot up if you have a car without one of these systems?
This question I can answer with a reasonable degree of certainty; no, it does not.
Insurance companies increase rates for automobile coverage for many reasons, real or illusionary. But "does your insurance shoot up" strictly for not having a recording device in a vehicle is not one of them.
Do some insurance companies charge less when provided access to policy owner driving patterns which the companies infer reduce their risk? Sure.
> Do some insurance companies charge less when provided access to policy owner driving patterns which the companies infer reduce their risk? Sure.
> But that is a different question.
In what way? A discount for allowing surveillance is identical to an extra charge for disallowing it. They're identical, unless the "base" rate is set externally somehow.
$5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon == $2 for sugar water, $3 extra to add lemon.
That "better" analogy is a restatement of "$5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon."
> In this case, the discount is "opt-in."
The base price is not a force of nature. $5 with the option to opt-in to a $3 discount sounds great, until you realize that just a month ago the price was $2 by default. They raised the default by $3, but allowed you to opt-out of that increase. Whether you label that "opt-in" [to the discount] or "opt-out" [from the increase], you end up in exactly the same place.
> A discount for allowing surveillance is identical to an extra charge for disallowing it.
I don't think this is necessarily true. You're right that there's an unknown base rate, but that means you can't say what you're saying as well. And if you have other companies that offer non-driving-pattern policies as well, and they're a similar price, you can see it's a discount not an added cost.
In fact, regardless, other companies are your best bet in combatting rising prices for any reason.
Yes. That is what "...unless the base rate is set externally somehow" means.
It is different initially, when only one company is offering the "discount" and they have not yet adjusted their base price upward. In fact, the people who want the discount will presumably flock to their service, which may even mean they won't raise the base price all the way up if it makes their costs lower. But if that works, the other companies will follow suit.
In short: there's a period of time when there's a difference, and you have a real choice. If the difference is real, it will get locked in to the entire industry. It's a positive economic profit, and those go away.
This question I can answer with a reasonable degree of certainty; no, it does not.
Insurance companies increase rates for automobile coverage for many reasons, real or illusionary. But "does your insurance shoot up" strictly for not having a recording device in a vehicle is not one of them.
Do some insurance companies charge less when provided access to policy owner driving patterns which the companies infer reduce their risk? Sure.
But that is a different question.