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Trust an Insurance Company's "Drive-Cam?"
ramen99 writes "Our new car insurance company offered us discounts for our teenage driver if we agree to install a 'drive-cam' that records driving habits and wirelessly transmits video footage to a 'neutral driving coach' for evaluation and comment. While this might be great to monitor a new teen driver, it will also monitor other adult drivers. The insurance company claims that they would never use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable. Would you give up your privacy to save some dough? Installation is free, and the camera mounts just under the rear-view mirror. Something seems fishy about this..." Especially when, according to a British insurance firm, computer engineers are most likely to crash (sent in by antdude).
I will never put a camera in my car that wirelessly transmits to anyone. I think a lot of people would have problems with this...
... correlation does not imply causation
However, I've always thought it would be a good a idea to put small cameras in my own car (probably hooked up to a car pc), set to record on motion and store the past few days of video. These would be for my own use only -- I'd never allow a third party unrestricted access, but it might be useful if there's ever any question about what happened in an accident.
They're introducing this product by initially marketing it for teens... as if it is somehow more acceptable to spy on them than anyone else. I'm sure this product will eventually be marketed towards all drivers, but if they introduced it initially like that, it might not get as favorable a response (maybe)...
As for "computer engineers are most likely to crash"
...and farmers think that 15 miles an hour is fast...
You're from the city, ye? Perhaps the fact that farmers generally live in rural areas with less congested roads could have something to do with it?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
If a participant is involved in an accident, will anyone besides parents and their teens have access to the audio and video?
It is possible American Family might request Teen Safe Driver output from customers in some situations involving the claims process, for instance, as part of an accident investigation. The information also is subject to being subpoenaed by other parties in a legal proceeding.
Which in reality means the very people you wouldn't want to show the video to will be able to see it.
Not to mention that most people growing up in farming areas (at least here in the UK, not sure about other countries) have usually got at least five years more driving experience when they go to sit their driving tests than people from other areas. If you can't drive a tractor, and fit, maintain and operate all the implements for it by the time you're 11, then it's special school time...
The next step is to put equipment on your body that continuously monitors your activities where each Jaywalk and other minor infringements are added to your tax. The government will also add penalty fees for each offending word that comes out of your mouth, pretty much like Demolition Man.
Privacy issues and other consideration does not matter, it boils down to one simple rule, never trust a insurance company!
If you feel like it would be an unacceptable invasion of your privacy, it's an invasion of a teenager's privacy too. Seems like every time I turn on the radio I hear ads pushing ATTs ability to GPS track your teenager's cellphone or a banks advertising their service to e-mail you with the details of every purchase your teen makes using their debt card in real time. I'm adding this car camera to the same category.
I wouldn't want it in my car so don't put it in a teenager's either.
The problem is that these 'discounts' match a price increase of the same amount when the technology is ready for the general population. One year, your health insurance provider will give you a $10/month break on your premiums if you sign a 'I do not smoke' form. The next year, the rates will go up by $10/month, or more.
The year after that, the rates go up yet again. They then tell your employer that if any employees are seen smoking on company grounds, they'll double their premiums. Suddenly, you can't smoke within view distance of your work building.
A few months later, they start blood pressure/cholesterol/insulin/weight monitoring. With a discount, of course, if you choose to opt-in.
Insurance is a gambling game. The company is the dealer, and we, the consumers, are the players. We belly up to the table, place our bets, and the dealer gives us our cards. Of course, they've been allowed to stack the deck with their own cards and change the rules around a little bit, because let's face it, you're playing in their casino, under their rules.
This is why people have such a problem with insurance companies. You know, you pay your premiums for five years, make one or two claims, and both of them are auto-rejected, making you call and beg for them to cover it, so you don't have to pay thousands of dollars for a procedure that took five minutes.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
No. Next question.
If you're happy to have your teen's driving monitored, why would you not be happy to have your own monitored in the same way? Don't be a hypocrite and treat people with the same level of respect (and privacy) that you expect yourself. I'm sure your parents didn't baulk at the extra insurance premiums when you started to drive their car.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
A safe driver has nothing to fear, takes the camera, and pays less.
This is a fallacy in line with "innocent people having nothing to fear from the government" that we hear as justification for illegal wiretaps, which is patent bullshit. If I get in a wreck and it's my fault, my policy (typically) gets reviewed, maybe canceled and my premiums go up. Insurance companies serve me, not the other way around. I've had one ticket in my last 20 years of driving in a large, congested metro area and I sure as hell don't want my insurance company watching me drive.
Sorry, but you're an idiot.
You're being forced to work under unreasonable and dangerous conditions.
You are risking your life and others on the road (no sleep, exhaustion, skip eating = eventually you will fall asleep and/or pass out on a major motorway).
Your employers have absolutely zero care for you at all - to the point where what you have said suggest they are actually, knowingly, breaking several employment laws. That's how much respect they have for you.
What they are doing is *not* shifting the cost - it's called finding some idiot to work his arse off and pay you for doing one page of tax paperwork and not caring about *anything* else that happens to them, including if they kill themselves or others.
Get a brain. Get the hell out. If I knew you, I'd report you AND your employer for a) dangerous driving, b) employment-related offences. That's *not* a job. It's slave labour. Screw the "credit crunch", there are millions of jobs out there that pay the same and don't involve that crap. Where the hell are your brains?
"Think of the children" as an argument is a red flag--usually means there's something wrong with what you're saying and you don't want people to think rationally about it.
Usually, Mom and Dad fund teen's car (that's the car which belongs to the teen, for all you BTAF fans).
If the gadget saves m&D money, teen gets a take it or leave it option (well, teenage was a few decades ago; maybe it's changed since then...).
If the surveillance was actually something people wanted, it would be offered to everyone as the latest perk on the insurance plan.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Fit speed limiters and black box recorders on all cars. Drivers just can't be trusted to obey the law.
What about putting cameras in every home then, since people cannot be trusted to obey the law?
It is a slippery slope.
I went through the AmFam TeenDriver http://www.teensafedriver.com/ website on this and found myself actually more than fleetingly interested in the capability (I have a 13yr old son who, being in the US, will be eligible to drive in 3 years). AmFam did a good job in posting a number of videos that hit the emotional part of a parent - wanting to protect while educating their children.
Then I followed the link to DriveCam.com. Now is when concern start rising. Yes - I did see an Insurance company monitoring a teenage driver and maintaining extremely personal data forever and may have been okay with that. But now the data goes to yet another service provider. In looking there, it is not clear to me that the videos or data does not go to any other company.
So my interest in helping educate and protect my son is obliterated with so many others having access to this information. I question their inability to do geo-location - it is merely one more chip and a few more bits of data to be passed! Add the name, vehicle info, date/time, location and events (yes - there will be many "events" as someone learns to drive) with audio & video.... sorry The Minority Report comes immediately to mind!!
A far more appealing device would be one that does the recording but retains the data longer. I would buy a device that informs me of "events" as they happen. Give me some information such as sudden swerving, acceleration, braking or jostling of the vehicle. Let me, the responsible parent, be able to choose if I should or should not contact my child and make a parental decision. I would love to be able to review the events at home afterwards. I am not willing to wirelessly transmit this stuff anywhere. Yes, it is after the fact and bad stuff can happen. But it is far better than not being informed like today and would give me the chance to sit down with my child and review his (her) actions as an upcoming adult.
Succinctly - I don't want 3rd parties involved. I'd pay a reasonable amount of money for the device (upto $150 or so) for us to use.
So, basically this is massive systematic criminalization of speeding, just because it's so much simpler and easier to enforce.
If you go twice as fast you have four times the energy. This is why speeding is a priority. Car parts sometimes fail while you are using them through no fault of your own, speed limits are supposed to reflect that.
Obligatory Disclaimer: Anyone not going 75 mph on the posted-65mph Highway 280 in California is getting passed by everyone, including the truckers and the buses. Just took 101 to 1something to 1 to 9 to 35 to 280 to 101 to 175 to home yesterday, and the freeway was MOVING. I actually got to get up around 100 C on the thermostat in my 1982 W126 300SD :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Is the situation in the US really like that?
Yes. Right now the US has a serious shortage of experienced truck drivers and new drivers are being shot right through school (figuratively, of course) and into the cab of a truck making long hauls. Truckers are forced to sleep short hours and make long hauls over the speed limits in order to make deadlines in some cases; in others they are paid poorly and "encouraged" to make up the difference on bonuses in order to entice the same behavior. Seasonal trucking often also involves inexperienced drivers; in general, trucks without air brakes can be driven with trivially available licenses.
A lot of my lifts in Europe and Central Asia come from truck drivers, and a lot of them are quite well-educated people, often with university degrees, who began driving trucks because of uncertain economic times. It's not like there's much other work to do in certain places, especially the former Soviet Union.
That's unfortunate for them; it really blows what you say next out of the water though:
I wouldn't call the job shit house work either.
If you have a Uni degree and you're driving a truck because of uncertain economic times, it's shit work. (Anything you want to do is a great career, if it will pay the bills and you won't have to wonder what will happen to you when you're old and senile.)
While it is monotonous, the money is a lot better than you'd expect, and the amount of time drivers have to actually work is continually reduced by new legislation.
Not around here, at least, not effectively.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"