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

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.

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.