Big Brother In Your Front Seat

Rick Zeman writes "Would you give up your privacy in your car to save a few bucks on your auto insurance? 'Safe' drivers who plug an electronic device into their vehicles will be then eligible for a discount on their insurance. They say, '...the device constantly tracks car speed. By comparing that with a clock in the TripSense device, the device figures how far the car goes, mapping it against the time of day. At the end of each policy term, the customer would download the data and see what discount he or she would get. Customers can see all their data before deciding to send it to Progressive, and can decide not to send it -- and not get extra discounts.' I wonder how soon it will be that everyone has one except those resigned to paying extra as with grocery 'convenience' cards."

Comments

Entrapment

[rainman_bc]

Gotta love this. It's entrampment. They assume if you don't wish to upload your driving data that you are a bigger risk.

Re:Entrapment

[Lumpy]

doesn't matter, Progressive tries entrapment all the time. Dont send them an affidavit from your last insurance company? well that "low" rate now is increased by 50%.

progressive = insurance for bad drivers. Most mainstream insurance companies like State Farm and AAA are actually much cheaper than progressive if you are a safe driver already. I'm insuring 2 vehicles + a RV for almost $100.00US less a month than the 1 vehicle I had insured under progressive.(I have had no tickets or accidents for almost 14 years now) also, if you ask for any discounts after they jack your rates, they tell you to sod off.

it's a gimmick trying to get more bad drivers to switch to them... and then they up your rates like MAD when you have to renew.

you have to look at the company first.

Progressive?

[eln]

The catch is that you have to be insured by Progressive. Bleh. I had their service for a year, then jumped to State Farm and am paying $300 less per 6-month term then I was before.

Also, what about those of us who constantly go 5 mph above the speed limit? Would we be targeted as reckless drivers because we "speed" most of the time? No thanks.

Not for me

[ack154]

The customer would then plug the device into the on-board diagnostic port under the dashboard. The port is on all models sold in the USA since 1996.

Looks like I'm out, I have a '94. I don't have Progressive anyways, but it's not even compatible with my car.

In Minnesota, where the highway speed limit is 70 mph, drivers who go over 75 less than 0.1% of the time get an extra 5% discount.

Less than 0.1% of the time and it's only 5%?! Now I don't live in Minnesota, but I don't think I'd get much discount at all. The highway speedlimit here in NY is either 55 or 65 (depending) and my avg speed would probably be 65+ and 75+ (respectively) for a lot more than 0.1% of the time. Maybe that would get me 0.1% discount?

IMO, I think they'd have to offer a little bit more of a discount for the masses to really consider it. I'd slow down a bit if it were worth it. But for someone who may be paying $500/yr for insurance and getting MAYBE 5% off, that's only $25, or maybe $2/month. Just doesn't sound too enticing to me, though some people may jump at the opportunity to save a little. But your results may vary.

speed and time of day?

[morcheeba]

I wonder how well Progressive's device will corralate with actual accident rates. It can't tell the difference between going 55 on a highway and going 55 in a preschool parking lot. Or, for that matter, 20 mph in the lot, and 20 on the highway.

Hopefully they'll do more than just histogram your speeds -- maybe they'll try to categorize your driving -- local, stop-and-go, freeway -- and then maybe check to see how often you suddenly decellerate. Jazz it up right, and you could detect cell phone usage, too.

Re:Everyone should have one

[rworne]

The device is similar to the Davis Carchip if not this particular device. It hooks up to the OBDII port and reads the car's vitals from there.

Remember, it's a device drivers can simply plug in to the car. OBDII is a serial protocol that would be a bit harder to hack than the speedometer pulse wire.

Some things the CarChip does that this device will likely do:

1. Record times the device was disconnected
2. Record times data was downloaded/memory cleared
3. Keep a record of the speeds via timed snapshots
4. Keep a record of the date/time car was used (and how long).

It can keep track of vehicle usage (in my case) for the last three months with logging data points every 5 seconds.

No records of destinations or GPS tracking on these base models.

Disclaimer: I don't work for the company, but I have a Carchip E/X installed as insurance against unfair tickets and warranty "abuse" claims by the manufacturer.

Re:No

[SlashHack]

I disagree with the premise. Who says that 'speeding equates to accidents?'. Give me a break. I've been almost run over by grandmas not paying attention going 10 miles an hour under the speed limit. Perhaps we should raise car insurance rates exponentially as age increases to get the real threat off the road.

Certainly if one is not paying attention, no matter who they are, they're going to cause an accident. I disagree it's just the speeders.

--
You can have my sports car when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Good idea - consider the flip side

[Moooo Cow]

I'm an independent computer consultant, probably like a lot of other Slashdot readers. So, put your business hat on and consider this from that perspective.

Suppose you're bidding on a contract to upgrade/replace a computer system for a potential customer. In order to give a proper cost estimate, you'll need to know as much detail as possible about the requirements. Perhaps this would include something like the average number of transactions per day performed. If all the customer can do is say that there is "a bunch" of transactions, your estimate will be very approximate, and you'll have to pad it accordingly or add a large contingency factor.

However, if the customer could produce for you an automated log of all daily transaction counts for the last month, you would have a precise understanding of what to expect, and could estimate accordingly. This may result in a lower estimated cost, and increase your chances of winning the bid.

Essentially, this is what Progressive is doing - they are asking for more detailed information in an effort to win your continuing business. If you don't provide that information, that's fine... but then they will have to rely on a more approximate estimate of risk, and the quote they provide you with will likely be higher based on less precise information. If you're a prudent businessperson, you'd be trying to do the same thing whereever you can.

Re:No

[Monkelectric]

I drive an early 60's, when I bought it it wasn't equipped with seat belts because at that point in history there were no seatbelt laws

Oh please :) Here's how it will work: Government will require you to have insurance (which in most states it does). Insurance companies won't insure a car WITHOUT the device.

A friend of mine from sweeden says, while marijuana is legal in sweeden, you can't get a job or car insurance if you use it, so you're effectively a non-citizen.

Here's how the insurance companies will scam you

[Billy the Mountain]

It's just like grocery store member cards, you start using them, you save right? Wrong, initially, maybe, but now, by using them, you're paying what you would have paid before the program existed and if you don't use the card you're hosed.

Same thing with this: You start out saving money, prices creep back up to normal. Those that refuse to submit to the program are hosed.

BTM

Yup

[Greyfox]

One explained that to me once. If you ticket a cop speeding through your zone, they'll ticket you for speeding through their zone. Even if you weren't particularly speeding. So everone exercises a quid-pro-quo and no one tickets anyone else who's a cop. That means as a cop you could habitually do 110 in school zones and you'll never get ticketed for it.

If you donate to their pension fund and put that little sticker they send you on your car, they'll be more inclined to let you go. It's not the get out of ticket free card that being a cop is, but unless you were doing something radical or they're WAY under quota, you'll likely just get off with a warning.

Re:do NOT do this, and do NOT support it

[selderrr]

I know that in the USA, speed limits are different from europe. Where I live (Belgium), speed limit is 120km/h on highways. Practically everyone goes over that by a margin of 10km/h. Which is tolerated by cameras. I used to do it too, until we bought a new car, a renault traffic, which is a LOT bigger than our previous car, an opel tigra. The renault can do 150km/h easily, as did the tigra (shitcar BTW), but since you have a completely different view of traffic (it's a van), you feel speed diferently. Nowadays I drive 120km/h tops, and found out a few things :

- I consume 15% to 25% less fuel. Amazing isn't it ? This is mainly due to not constantly accelerating to 130-140 just to break again 1 minute later. My speed remains far more constant
- I get everywhere at the same time as i did when i drove faster. There is ZERO difference on average. I do Brussels-Ostend (150km) every week, and there's really no difference since i started driving slower.
- I feel safer, calmer and less stressed. I never thought that this 10km/h speed difference would make such a mental difference. I 've started listening to music again, since at 130-140km/h, i had to focus on traffic instead of music.
- the whole 'you have to drive along with the flow' thing is complete and utter bollocks. Traffic flows in blocks, that group themselves around a group of trucks who can't bypass eachother since they have speed limiters. Cars just move from block to block. The speeders wiggle their way thru these blocks a few % faster than the rest, and then pull up to 150km/h untill they reach the next block 10secs later. I just reach that block 12seconds later.


Honestly : just give it a try and drive slower. you'll notice that most of your prejudices are balooney.


Note : driving slower has one explicit effect : middle fingers from freaks who think their lives are so filled up, they really need those 10% they think they can shave off in traffic. Usually types who wash their car every week and thereby lose hours of time :-)