Big Brother Insurance?

[lydy]

So, Progressive, which is currently my car insurance company, offers a discount if I put a dingus in my car that assesses how safely I drive.  I guess it looks at things like speed, vigorous braking, and probably tracks my every move?  Does anyone have any experience with these things?  Anybody have any opinions?  

On the being tracked issue, well, I do carry my phone everywhere, so Der Google already knows where I work, even though I never told it and I have weird working hours.  Der Google probably knows anything said Progressive dingus could intuit, so my data she isn't safe, anyway. 

Comments

[graydon]

Google has a strong interest in other people not having any data they collect, because most of what they sell is based on abstractions of it.

Insurance companies generally have an interest in making driving data nigh-public, so they can share it and write policies more accurately.

I've had an entirely functional GPS device decide I was going 90kph uphill on a bicycle in downtown Toronto; it couldn't cope with the reflections from the surrounding metallic glass skyscraper windows, some of which presumably were stronger signals than the actual satellite. I'd be curious about how accurate the driving quality evaluation device might be.

[lydy]

I believe, for speed and deceleration information, it gets that data directly from the car, not a GPS. I think it may also compare speed to GPS location to determine if you are speeding.

[graydon]

That seems relatively straightforward, though if the GPS location blooms into a schoolyard it might not be the best thing.

How new is this program your insurance company is running?

[lydy]

Looks like Progressive has been doing some version of this since 1998, so not new at all, in tech terms.

I think that insurance companies have an interest in making the statistical data that they collect near-public, but I don't think they have much incentive to release non-anonymized individual data. Could be wrong, though.

[pameladean]

How new is this? How many other insurance companies are doing it? How long has anybody been doing it? Have they gotten the basic bugs out of it, or is it likely to mess up in some spectacular, stupidly unpredicted fashion and get you in trouble you don't deserve?

P.

[graydon]

Seconding all of this!

Being in the Customer Zero tranch for serious liability is not the best plan.

[calimac]

My reaction would be N-O-double O, nooo.

[lydy]

Yeah, that's my reaction, too. But is this, given my driving habits and my cell phone usage, reasonable, or is this an emotional response?

[green_knight]

Entirely reasonable from where I'm sitting.

I would worry about the actual accuracy (the number of times PokemonGo told me that I'm going too fast when I'm standing still is legend), its not just about an accurate device, it's about how you process that data, and I don't trust programmers that much.

But beyond that, I worry about normalising of surveillance; it is NOT a reasonable request for your insurance company to know where you are taking your own car at any point in time. Just because someone else has that data does not mean you should give it out freely to everyone else.

[dragonlady7]

My dude has that dealie from Progressive, he got it when he bought his car. Hmmm... two years ago?

Since then he's exceeded 80mph one time in it, and they emailed him about it within a couple of days, telling him not to make a habit of driving 'unsafely'.
(Just this week he made me drive his car on the highway for gosh, like eight hours, and i definitely hit 80 twice during that time, so we'll see what kind of note he gets this time.)

They haven't complained about anything else in that time, so I don't know what else they really look for; it's not like he's in the habit of driving in any particularly dramatically unsafe ways.

[lydy]

Was there a significant discount? Or was it a wash? (I mostly drive very sedately, in town, so I am unlikely to even get a note.)

[jack]

Urgh. I really hate it from a civil liberties perspective, but it probably won't do any harm on a personal level (as someone else says, provided they've got the bugs out).

[carbonel]

E-surance (my auto provider) offers a similar deal, and I decided to take a pass. It's just a little too creepy for my taste.

[quadong]

Too creepy. That's not a well thought out logical analysis, but it's my firm position. The discount would have to be *dramatic* for me to even consider it. 50% off, maybe. It's not worth giving anyone detailed longitudinal data on my whereabouts and habits for $10 a month or whatever.

[lcohen]

put me in the "no thank you" group as well. i don't think it's a solely emotional response--it feels potentially terribly invasive to me!