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Insurer Measures Driver Safety With Smartphone App To Calculate Premiums
Qedward writes "Motorists are being invited to help develop a new driving app that could earn them a discount of 'up to 20%' on their motor insurance. British insurer Aviva is using smartphone technology to create individual driver profiles that will be used to calculate tailored pay-how-you-drive premiums. The driver behavioral app, Aviva RateMyDrive, will monitor motorists taking part in the test for 200 miles, including acceleration, braking and cornering. This data is then turned into an individual score which helps determine the motorist's premium, with 'safer' drivers earning up to 20% off their deal."
Besides the fact that this is begging to be gamed, how to they tell the difference between someone driving carefully and some half-blind octogenarian that's causing traffic accidents around them by driving too slow and failing to react to near-misses that may affect the next driver?
I'm not too sure this is a universally good idea. Sometimes traffic gives you a tricky situation and you need to accelerate or do a quick lane change to avoid a potential accident. In those moments I'm not too sure it's good to introduce the thought, "Oh, but wait, that may increase my premium".
Wonder how they would rate me if I took the bus to work for a week? Certainly wouldn't catch me speeding or accelerating/decelerating too hard, but I wonder how the frequent stops would factor in? Also if you didn't put your phone into airplane mode, would being a passenger in a 737 double your rates when they clock you doing 150+mph at takeoff before you ascend above cell reception range?
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Drive sensibly while you're running the app, drive like a nutter when you're not.
On a more serious note, if this ran *all the time* then it may provide useful metrics on driver ability without the privacy concerns of GPS tracking. Yes, you could *theoretically* estimate someone's position from the accelerometer data - that is, after all, how Intertial Navigation Systems work - but it wouldn't be very accurate. You could estimate someone's position from cell handoff too, if you included that in the data, but then you'd have to be *trying* to be creepy ;-)
One of the companies I work with installs GPS trackers in vehicles for things like lorries, heavy plant and such. Their system has an option for an accelerometer that will beep if the drivier is accelerating too quickly, and thus wasting a lot of fuel. One biggish fleet has apparently saved about 1 million Euros on diesel alone using this, never mind tyres and repairs.
How long before the insurance company succumbs to the temptation of penalizing those who use their cars too much? The more time you spend on the road the higher the chance that you'll be involved in an incident, regardless of how well you drive. You can see how such information could be used to discriminate against people living in rural areas and those living further from their place of work.
Letting them track you is like talking to a cop who's placed you under arrest... they might convince you that you're being given a chance to prove what an upstanding law abiding citizen you are, but in reality they're only looking for the incriminating parts to hold against you. Its the marketing folks jobs to come up with hypothetical situations where you can save money so you'll switch to their brand... its the bean counters and their lawyers jobs to see that you don't ever actually qualify for said hypothetical discounts, and you are giving them the ammo...
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Progressive is already using a feature like this in the U.S. It's just not a smart phone app. It's actually a little box you put in your car. It's called Snapshot. Not my kind of thing. There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.
So I have to drive carefully for 200 miles to get my rating up and then I can turn it off and go back to my old habits? Or just swap phones with my mum for 200 miles? Or just not take my (primary) phone when I want to have some fun?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
For years insurance companies have been doing the exact same thing of estimating how good or bad a driver you are based on your age, gender, occupation etc. Now they're proposing to allow you to determine how good a driver you are based on using an app for not too long of a time really.
Is there a potential for it to be misused, yeah, but I'd welcome any move to judge my driving over lumping me in with a particular age group or gender.
There is no -1 disagree
Sounds like malignant nonsense. And I hope people don't accept it, else we might soon need smartphones to obtain drivers-licenses. Insurance companies, although happily masquerading as safety-options, are mafia in disguise. They have purchased their way into government and become mandatory by force, compelling people to pay for protection whether they want it or not. Of course drivers need protection from the irresponsible or even honest accidents (collisions) of others, but with such a huge amount of them being fender-benders, which premiums don't cover, insurance companies make fortunes forcing people to pay for what they might do, and often never do - nor get compensated for. I'm not suggesting that the concept of insurance is necessarily intrinsically flawed; but the current model is a state-sponsored scam. They offer "rewards" of reduced extortion fees to those who behave well and age over time. But what about the person who drives for 50 years and never has an accident? If these insurance companies are mandated by force, then they should likewise be mandated by force to offer rebates to the families of deceased drivers who payed for protection but never used it.
They have monopolized upon the hypothetical, or at best the questionably statistical, and have done so with minimal mercy for their subjects. I am more than 100% for safety, so much that I will volunteer my time to empower it, but let us not confuse safety with horse-shit.
A lot of social studies have been done on games and the motivating factors behind them that breed such (understandably) fanatical enthusiasms. Is it so difficult to imagine that we are being gamed ourselves?
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
The idea to customize insurance up to individual profiles is completely opposite to the very first idea of the insurance itself which is a way to share a risk within a large pool of fellows in order to distribute the cost. If you start building precise profiles of individuals and charge them accordingly, you defeat the idea behind the insurance. At term, you will charge the whole risk to each individual and they will no longer see advantages to insure themselves. Insurance is about sharing a risk over the largest population possible.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Does it jack up your rates if you text or talk on the phone while driving?
The modern world is based on statistics and conforming to expectations, whether that's an aptitude test determining what you're "probably" good at to some crude metrics determining whether you're "probably" a safe driver. Everyone is fitted into neat little categories and self-fulfilling prophecies are created, reinforcing existing prejudices and providing little scope for social improvement.
No more is this true than with driving: young men are essentially told that they are high risk. It's like the classical story of parents who started being fined for picking up their kids late from school, so ended up doing it more because they thought they'd now paid for the right to fetch their kids late.
How is this new?
In Spain, MAPFRE has been offering for at least 4 years the YCar line of insurance for young drivers which offers as much as a 40% discount if you install a GPS-like device which sends them information about when you drive, what speed you drive, how many kilometers, etc.
If you speed up, drive on "dangerous" hours (e. g. weekend 2 AM - 6 AM), etc, you lose the discount for next year.
http://www.mapfre.com/seguros/es/particulares/soluciones/seguros-coches-jovenes-ycar.shtml
There are several policies to choose and some of them even allow to adjust the policy clauses, for instance in case you are a young driver who works the night shift.
The reality is that everybody thinks they are above average driver. So if they get a score that is below average, they know they will pay more to offset the drivers who pay less. So they simply walk away. So ultimately exactly half of the drivers would get a worse deal in a perfect world. The insurance company will end up with better than average drivers only ... but these drivers will pay less insurance. The insurance company pays out less but earns less per driver. That is a one to one relationship, so the insurance company has no incentive to do this ... unless people naturally think they are better than average drivers or they think that can fool this application. Then people will flock and the app can be no more an app that has an image of two cog wheels that at the end of 200klms simply tells you that you have qualified for a discount. No different than what happens now that there is a myriad of insurance companies that "specialise" in different groups. You go to three companies and one specialises in people with mustaches and you get a discount at that one. Your sense of value is created by the other two and the third springs the trap. The reality is that there are only a couple of insurance companies and the rest are simply fronts.
AFAIC just break the law, don't buy insurance. This is a problem of-course, because eventually the cops will have the license plate recognition systems that are tied into insurance databases and all the other databases and it will be nearly impossible to drive without insurance, but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, cancelled their insurance completely and drove without it.
It's possible to set this up with today's communications than ever before. There should be: "get together to break the law" app that people would get and then all act as one to break the law of the day. This is the only way that doesn't involve violence against the government, with guns and all, that can be used to take the power back from the government.
Imagine if tax time came and nobody paid the taxes.
Imagine if everybody cancelled their insurance and drove anyway.
Imagine if everybody had drugs on them at all times.
what is the power going to do, when the subjects stop recognising the power? Kill everybody?
You can't handle the truth.
If anyone thinks the scumbag insurance companies are going to give anyone a 20% discount, I have some prime swamp land for you.
Bring back personal liability. If you drive like an ass, you cause an accident, you are liable for all damages you caused. not your insurance company, YOU.
you were busy texting and hit a motorcyclist? everything you own is now the property of the motorcyclists family, as well as 50% of all your income for the next 30 years.
You dont want that liability? then buy $10,000 of liability insurance at $1500 a month, or stop driving like a moron.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just don't buy insurance from any company that uses this program. Insurance company make money by having thousands of costumers, and they relies that on average those customers won't get into an accident. The problem arises when they loose the majority of their customers.
Example if you have 100k customers and 2 of them get into an accident then it's not a big deal. But if you only have 100 customers and 2 of them get into an accident then you take a loss.
The reason that we force people to have insurance is because they don't have the money to pay the damages, and the damages have to be paid, how else is the motorcyclist supposed to get his medical care and compensation?
How exactly is getting 50% of your income for the next 30 years going to help the motorcyclist family if your income is 0? And how exactly is it going to help them pay to get all their damages restored right now?
"Those who value cheaper car insurance over privacy deserve neither."
The American insurance company Progressive has something like this now -- a little device that plugs into a port in your dashboard. It monitors how much you drive, when you drive (I think between 12 AM and 4 AM are more dangerous hours), and how many "hard stops" you have (for them, deceleration at more than 7 MPH/s).
The little machine beeps at you when you make a "hard stop".
I like it because it saved me money. But I hate it because the hard stop measurement is idiotic. Nobody goes from 60 MPH to 0 MPH by linearly slowing down by 6 MPH per second. Your rate of deceleration is probably linear, but any normal driver will go over Progressive's hard stop threshold and get beeped at. So trying to work in their stupid system makes you brake weird. I know I should just ignore it but it's hard.
It also really encourages you to run yellow lights -- I have a four-lane road near my house with a 55 MPH speed limit and a bunch of stop lights. Every time a light turns yellow and I stop the bloody tattler beeps at me.
I don't think either of those behavior modifications were intended, but that's the behavior that Progressive is now rewarding.
That's real helpful when you're tetraplegic and you were hit by someone who lives in a caravan.
[FUCK BETA]
That's why I don't like the idea. Strictly speaking personally, I think outside the box with this kinda thing. While great to lower premiums and such, I think about what else they can do with that data that I might not like. Things I can think about today, or even worse, things I can't. Would I really care if they analyzed the data and sent me Starbucks offers everyday because I drive by three of them on my way to work? Probably not... but what if they decide to raise my rates because I drive through an area of town that is more prone to accidents? Every so many years I read about the top 10 worse roads, one of which is by me. Will they raise rates if I take that route to work? While these things 'may be' far from what will happen with my data today, tomorrow is a different story. I would rather stay away from those sorts of systems, whereas others might not mind. Just preference I guess (with a hint of paranoia).
So... Translation of "Get Aviva" is "Get a life?"
Woot! /humor
Instead of measuring acceleration, etc They should write an app to determine if you play with your phone while you drive. That would most likely be a much better predictor of how likely you are to be in an accident.
I was getting quotes on line and Progressive asked if I wanted 'up to' a 20% discount if I used the SnapShot dongle for a few weeks. Their web site claims 900,000 people have done it.
Operating a vehicle on a public road is not a right, but a privilege. Many States compel you to agree to all sorts of things in order to obtain a license.
Why this is news or alarming is funny.
Also, most modern cars have a data capture ability for minutes of automobile recording. They can tell how fast you were going, Were the brakes on? Seat belt buckled? etc etc etc
Its all in place already.
So whats the 'news'?
I would never ever use one of these things. It's like the progressive plugin gadget, hooks into the cars electronics system and has gps (except this one is using smartphone sensors and an app). Same type of deal, you use it and you can potentially save a bit of money on your insurance... though they neglect to say what happens if you fail to match their "perfect" profile, but do not cause any accidents or gain tickets. How much will they jack your rates up?
At least this one sounds like it's only used for the first 200 miles of driving? I probably wouldn't mind that so much, especially for brand new drivers and elderly drivers. (come on, think of the, uhmmm... poor farmers markets!) I would not use the progressive version since that seems like it is a permanent thing as long as you hold that insurance... and it's just creepy. They know every little place you go to.
This new thing though, if indeed it's only a small test period of so many miles it might not be too bad (in the U.S) I know they are doing this in the U.K. I'm Surprised this is needed in the UK, with all the cameras everywhere.
Maybe this will get rid of the totally bullshit discrimination(In the U.S. if they used it, not sure how the U.K people fare) between the prices a Female vs Male get who have the exact same driving record (new driver or good driver... whatever) same vehicle make and model..etc. It's absolutely ridiculous right now. Comparing how much I paid when I started driving vs when my sister started driving. Both of us with completely clean records both driving and criminal. yet I paid like 2-3x more than she did starting out because I'm a male.
Which is total crap because just from observation while driving, most people that cut me off or run through lights, do stupid stuff in parking lots or just drive like maniacs in general are women (not that it's always the case, but I see it more than enough to think the prices a man pays are crap, we should pay the same and then change over time based on accidents/tickets...etc) something like 15 years of driving so far with a perfect record and around 2 months ago I get into my first accident. Cause? a girl making a left turn from a side road onto the main street right into oncoming traffic... so yeah left turn straight into my pass door, tearing it completely off and significant damage to the rear pass door. Wonder how much she pays >
anyways moving off topic. I just think a temp trial like this 100-200 miles and then no more after that would be a good way to balance out premiums between genders.
That would be an interesting option IF the government didn't steal 25% - 50% of your income.
Seems to me that this program is missing some critical metrics of driving safety. As an app it has the potential to monitor other phone activities while driving. I think that beyond the basic GPS based speed / location measurements and the accelerometer data they should be interested in how distracted the driver is by their mobile.
Say they're texting or browsing the web while driving but still doing the speed limit. The way this program is being described there would be no penalty. In reality the driver is by far more of a hazard to those around them and should pay a higher premium as they are more likely to be involved in an incident.
That process would be ineffective in the US where the majority of uninsured drivers have already figured out that it is cheaper to let the car be confiscated or abandon the car and run away on foot after an accident. There are just too many "beaters" they can buy for less than the insurance cost.
(not one word in there about the immigration status of these uninsured drivers because breaking the law to save money seems to popular among all groups)
I have a better idea. Give everyone a data-capable plate reader and a little LCD touchscreen in the dash and let us thumbs up or thumbs down someone's driving. That person driving like a crazy person with 1000 thumbs down and 0 thumbs up should probably cost a little more, lol.
raise your rates 20%.
i am so very tired....
In a lawsuit the plaintiff may want the data to show to the court that it was actually the defendants fault, based on their previous driving dats... The future is like the past, only that we aren't certain of it. I see court battles with traffic accidents and me no like.
Bring back personal liability. If you drive like an ass, you cause an accident, you are liable for all damages you caused. not your insurance company, YOU.
That's a fantastic idea. Let's start by making sure everyone has the money to pay those kinds of damages out of pocket. So the first step is eliminating poverty. How do you plan to do that?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
My wife's a much better driver than me. What's to stop me putting my phone in the back seat of her s 1.2L runabout that she rarely exceeds 50 mph in and letting her drive about for a while?
When I first saw the OBD2 data recorders that can give you an insurance discount, I figured I would have done this but make the plug do nothing. This limits your liability of breaking someone's car. Also, I'm under the impression that a driver will change their habits and drive safer when they feel like they're being watched. The actual data doesn't matter. An insurer doesn't care what your car does. They care how safe you are, and someone conscious about being safer is safer.
//TODO: signature
I don't know where you live, but I live in a democracy
it so happens that roman_mir does live in a democracy. however, he wishes it were not so. he openly supports defiance of the will of the people when his preferred leaders have ideas that he feels are superior to what the people express favor for. hence he is a fascist living in a democracy.
occasionally he will give lip service to the notion of "choice", but anyone who is familiar with his comment history here knows that is just a ruse. his actual stance is in no way favoring choice - at least, not choice that opposes the choices he has already made for you.
Must be different in Canada.I can't recall being asked what my mileage was when renewing my insurance.
They *do* have different brackets depending on your distance to work. Having =15km from work to home /w no more than 6 days/month over is a reduced rate, but overall driving for year doesn't seem to be a factor here.
Where you live, what you drive, your age, and probably tons of other stuff is though.
Why are those considered dangerous hours?
Maybe if you're driving tired, but if you're a night-shift worker etc they may actually be safer due to less others on the road.
Progressive is already using a feature like this in the U.S. It's just not a smart phone app. It's actually a little box you put in your car. It's called Snapshot. Not my kind of thing. There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.
I actually use snapshot. I do agree it is frustrating sometime when the system registers a "hard break", which drops my discount when it was that hard break that prevented an accident through no fault of my own. Then again, when you think about it from their prospective, they was me to minimize my risk of an accident in any fashion, regardless of fault (in case of an uninsured motorist). So even if the hard break isn't my fault, if I do most my driving in stop and go traffic on the freeway, I am more likely to get in an accident than on a less congested city road.
I really don't mind the program or tracking. According to them, they only track speed, time of day, and breaking, but honestly even if they tracked more, I wouldn't really mind. The whole reason I signed up for it to begin with was because my wife is a stay at home mom and only drives her car two or three times a week and then not very far.
Having insurance is already required by law. Me, I'm waiting for the ultimate in government redundancy, mandatory uninsured motorist insurance.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
devolved from consumers to criminals. In the eyes of an insurer you're nothing more than the outlander, or tank girl. Destined to destroy everything in your path with that used toyota corola, you must be fined heavily for the pontifications made in your honor behind the meeting room doors at the insurer. Once you have proven to be a safe driver, once we have broken you into where when and for how far we wish you to drive a car, we will throw a pittance your way. if its going to cost $1600 for your car to be insured for a year in what we consider the city, we will should you consider a shitty car, and a slow commute, throw as much as but not more than $320 at you. Should you however raise our ire in even the slightest, youll not see more than $50, if even that.
and god have mercy on your soul should you not continue to make accurate, diligent payments in perpetuity to our insurance company for long as you shall live. we will enact a non-continuous coverage fee on you for daring to give up your car for a few years and use the bus to save on gas.
Good people go to bed earlier.
the above post is from a sock puppet of roman_mir. why are we rewarding his sock puppetry by moderating it up?
I don't know where you live, but I live in a democracy
roman_mir happens to live in a democracy, though apparently that is against his free will. he actually yearns for fascism, as can be seen in his posts here. more specifically, he yearns to dictate to other people what their rights, freedoms, and values will be. he is 110% convinced that he is always right and everyone who disagrees with him is always wrong.
he actively preaches against freedom of speech, freedom to vote, and most other elements that consist a democracy. being as he speaks much more often of what he wants than what he has - or what any reasonable person would actually want in a society - it is more reasonable to speak of where he wants to live than where he actually lives.
Looks like it's passive GPS and accelerometer sensors only, with no video recording and no link to the OBDII connector.
As such, it can't detect if you use your turn signals when turning or changing lanes. Huge fail on detecting "safe" driving.
IMHO someone who changes lanes on a multi-lane highway without signaling just as dangerous as someone going maybe 20% over the speed limit.
FAIL. Do these featherweights somehow think that accelerating at 1 mph every minute makes you a safer driver? Judging braking and cornering is just as nonsensical without being able to witness the CIRCUMSTANCES and evaluate the CAPABILITIES of the driver.
Of course the test would be absurdly easy to game, though.
That's simple.
1. If the government can't operate on only a 10% taxe rate it is TOO BLOATED.
2. A *simple* 10% flat tax. When you have the current system at 73,000+ pages how the hell is the majority of people supposed to be informed so they can correctly follow the law?? Get rid of all the loop holes.
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2012/04/2012-how-many-pages-are-there-in-us-tax.html