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."

Comments

Begging to be gamed

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Begging to be gamed

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Wouldn't that just be a matter of statistics? The more data that's captured, the more patterns will emerge.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[wierd_w]

I'd say it is more a slippery slope:

The insurance company incentivises people to provide very detailed information about themselves, that they would normally never provide, and may even try to prevent being obtained.

In the process, they build a precedent that will penalize people that are unwilling to provide this data willingly.

EG, it starts out as "If I voluntarily join this program, I could say 20% on my insurance." It then later becomes the "New standard rate metric, based on your personal driving patterns," and eventually becomes "Penalized rate for not providing data on your traffic patterns."

While it looks good now, it wont look so good to people who value their privacy in the future. They will be lumped in with people who are clearly bad drivers but dont want to admit it, and want to hide that fact from the insurance companies.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[Sqr(twg)]

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 ... ?

Correlating speed to position and a database of speed limits will tell you if people are driving too fast or too slow. (In certain cases, driving slower than the speed limit is the correct action, so you'd have to look at a large dataset to differentiate between those who adapt to circumstances and those who always drive to slow.)

In general, slow drivers aren't a problem for insurance companies. If you drive slowly and another car gets into an accident while trying to overtake, it's typically his insurace that will have to pay, because he should have waited until it was safe to pass.

I suspect they are trying to weed out the young drivers who have never been in a near-accident and believe that they can drive 20 mph over the speed limit, because they have such a good car, and their reactions are so much better than other people's. If they can eliminate that subset of drivers, they wouldn't have to have such high premiums for young people in general.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[History's Coming To]

The UK insurance industry has a huge problem with bogus whiplash claims - the slightest little bump and lawyers are pushing for thousands of pounds in compensation for a medical condition which doctors admit is almost impossible to prove either way. This has lead to a fivefold increase in some insurance costs over the last fifteen years. Schemes like this, and others where rolling camera footage is stored, are an attempt to show that these low speed collisions are generating claims far beyond what is reasonable.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[SteveAyre]

Aviva developed a Pay As You Go insurance system several years ago now.
http://www.aviva.co.uk/media-centre/story/2840/norwich-union-launches-innovative-pay-as%20you-drive/

We studied it as part of a project during my CompSci course about the time it was launched.

Essentially you agree that they put a GPS tracker in your car. It monitors your speed/acceleration/braking/etc (just like the app). You then only pay insurance for when you are driving, and the price is affected by how well you drive. It's been around for some time now. It's fixed to your car, and if you remove it from your car so they don't see your bad driving you're illegally driving without insurance.

All the phone app is is a free trial of that type of insurance - far cheaper to give them an app than send them a tracker. If you were to actually buy their insurance there's no way they'd let you keep using the phone app for it. Too much chance of forgetting the phone or battery dying, let alone any 'gaming'.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[91degrees]

They don't care. They don't have to pay for the near misses or the accidents caused indirectly. They only care about what they have to pay for.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[RaceProUK]

Remember that when you hit someone who jumped a red light.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[N1AK]

How is that different to anything else? First class transport led to a decrease in the quality of economy transport (along with a drop in price).

Insurance is based on transferring a large personal risk to another entity at a cost you can afford. In the UK the insurance market is very competitive, there are hundreds of suppliers. If it works out that a young new driver can get insurance for £1,600 rather than £2,000 if they are willing to provide more information. If someone is willing to make that 'sacrifice' why shouldn't they be able get that discount and if you value your privacy enough that you are willing to pay not to share more information then so be it.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[Webcommando]

EG, it starts out as "If I voluntarily join this program, I could say 20% on my insurance." It then later becomes the "New standard rate metric, based on your personal driving patterns," and eventually becomes "Penalized rate for not providing data on your traffic patterns."

Sounds all too familiar to those living in the Chicago area. While the tollways were being updated to new open-road tolling (i.e. you don't need to stop at a booth), everyone was told that those who had an iPass (the electronic toll device) would receive a discount. Of course the discount turned into: those with iPass pay the same (high) cost as before and everyone using cash pays double.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[Lehk228]

they will have to, at least in NY they must disclose all methods they use in determining insurance rates

Re:Begging to be gamed

[Havenwar]

I could guess, but until we see the actual algorithms they use (i.e. never) that's all it would be. Insurance companies tend to have pretty good data on what kind of behaviour gets you involved in accidents, so I wouldn't be so quick to assume they'll be idiots about it.

Let's examine their motivation for a moment...
They want to raise the premium for those that lodge a lot of insurance claims. I.e. those that get into a lot of accidents. Granted they SAY the opposite - that they want to lower the premiums for safe drivers, but that's pretty much the same thing in company speak: lower the premiums for those who are rarely involved in accidents, bump prices for everyone, those that are rarely in accidents don't complain because they still pay less, and those that are more often in accidents... well.

Anyway, the users motivation is to be rarely in accidents. Granted, if you answer it impulsively you'd say you want to pay less for your insurance, but in the end it's the same thing. Those that drive in a way that is involved in fewer accidents will get rewarded, thus you want to drive in a way that gets you involved in fewer accidents... according to the insurance company. Who, by all rights, should know... after all next to the police they have the biggest databases ever on any accidents, causes, situations, cars involved and everything like that.

So really, the only way they would give a good score to that half deaf half blind guy who pulls out in traffic infront of you and refuses to speed up, is if his behaviour is less likely to cause an accident than yours. I trust them to be right in this, because they are motivated to be right - if they are wrong they get less money from high risk people, thus making them lose money overall. It's in their own best interest to be right.

And it's in your best interest to slow the fuck down when you're passing an on-ramp or crossroads, so you don't have to step on the breaks quite so often... Like someone once told me "If you keep getting hit by lightning, maybe you should consider not climbing trees in story weather." Or in other words, if this happens so often to you specifically, perhaps it's not so much them but you that can change your behaviour for a safer driving environment for all of us. Of course I couldn't say for sure, since I have no insight in you, your driving style, your environment, and all that...

But the insurance company will.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[Neil Boekend]

For example, I stay way back from the wide white line at intersections, the more traffic or faster the cross traffic is the farther back I stay. There is NO REASON to get up close unless turning right. All that does is set up a situation where an accident in the intersection could push cars into mine. The extra 10 feet doesn't matter for starting up again when the light turns green.

In some cases it also makes the sensors work. Here in the Netherlands most traffic lights detect whether there is a car waiting on the light. Most of these sensors are within 2 meters (6 feet) from the white line. If you keep 3,3 meters (10 feet) of distance then it will not notice you and thus it will not turn green.

Re:Begging to be gamed

[blackraven14250]

For every person actually affected, there's 20 frivolous claims.

Not too sure on this

[Riddler Sensei]

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".

Re:Not too sure on this

[captainpanic]

The actual issue is that it's just 200 miles - hardly a reasonable sample.

But then again, I would say that monitoring where I go for 5 meters is already an invasion of my privacy, so I wouldn't cooperate anyway. Screw them.

Re:Not too sure on this

[Cederic]

The actual issue is that it's just 200 miles - hardly a reasonable sample.

Exactly. Get onto a motorway at 2am, hit 70mph, cruise control on, no need to brake, accelerate or turn corners for the next 200 miles.

Or maybe 100 miles, if you then find a junction and take a leisurely trip around a roundabout to get back onto the motorway to come home again.

That approach also avoids them

monitoring where I go

I'm not going anywhere, just doing a quick data gathering exercise to save money on my car insurance.

Where all of this breaks down is that such a journey would cost me £25 in diesel, and that's well over 10% of my annual car insurance premium. Given that Aviva are around 15% more expensive than my current insurer, I'm better off just not bothering.

A 20% discount just doesn't justify the time, effort and (since they'll never stop at 200 miles, within a year it'll be ten times that) intrusion.

Re:Not too sure on this

[captainpanic]

But really, what privacy concern is there in acceleration data?

None. But...

You can bet that their programmers wrote in the conclusion of their presentation to management: "With more data, the test becomes more accurate."
So, when they will do the test again next year (they will, don't worry), it will include more data. Did you know that statistics say that secondary roads are more dangerous than highways?

I'll stay out from the start.

Re:Not too sure on this

[JosKarith]

This is another thin end of the wedge situation. For now it's an optional 200 mile sample. Then it'll be permanantly on. Then having this will be a condition of your insurance...
Remember that as this is a smartphone app location data will also be captured. Do you really want your insurer knowing everywhere you go? How long before the Police demand that data to track where someone's been?
OBdisclaimer - I work for an insurance company and I'm extremely uneasy about this.

Re:Not too sure on this

[hattig]

I don't think that this application is for you, an experienced driver with a £250 annual insurance premium.

This app is for younger drivers with >£1000 insurance premiums, where £20 of fuel is worth it to save £200. That's if they can stop themselves cruising down the motorway at 100mph at 2am because the road is so empty. Note that these young drivers will be in older, cheaper cars without cruise control too.

The only way around it is for the device to either mark down late night driving, or to require driving samples at specific times of the day, or for the device to take small samples totalling 200 miles from 1000 miles of driving - which would go some way to avoid the monitoring issue too.

Re:Not too sure on this

[roman_mir]

I see a business opportunity.

Tired of paying those high insurance premiums? Don't want to waste your own time and gas money to game the insurance system with your phone being driven very carefully for miles and miles on end? Well, now you can have your insurance premiums lowered for a low fee of 10 bucks per month, we'll drive your phone around, as we collect the phones of all the other folks who are taking advantage of our great deal and low rates.

Re:Not too sure on this

[digitalsolo]

A driver in the lane next to you suddenly swerves into your lane. The only option is an evasive maneuver.

A driver travelling the opposite direction suddenly comes toward you head on. The only option is an evasive maneuver.

A semi truck ahead of you on the motorway loses a tire retread. The only option is an evasive maneuver.

A vehicle in front of you loses a large piece of glass which flies toward your vehicle (I had this happen last year). The only option was evasive maneuvers.

Your comment seems to assume that all other drivers will act in proper, controlled ways, and that equipment failure is impossible. Both of those are incredibly incorrect.

public transport?

[LSDelirious]

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?

Re:public transport?

[Gordonjcp]

I've found that the single-spoke steering wheel on my CX (looks like this, from this article) make a perfect laptop stand. Since the steering wheel is practically locked solid above 70mph it doesn't even slide about when you're driving on the motorway.

Seems straightforward enough...

[Gordonjcp]

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.

Drive too much?

[abelb]

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.

Re:Drive too much?

[BradleyUffner]

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.

I thought insurance companies already do this. Every company I've had a policy with has always wanted current and yearly mileage when I signed up. Driving fewer miles in a year resulted in lower premiums.

Re:Drive too much?

[Alex]

That's not discrimination, its common sense.

If you do more miles - all things being equal, you are more likely to have an accident - so it makes sense for the insurer to charge you more. The only reason they aren't doing it yet is they've not found a good way to measure it yet, I'm sure they are working on it though.

Presumably now you are going to complain about insurers "discriminating" against people who live on flood plains, in high risk crime areas and arsonists ?

Alex

Re:Drive too much?

[abelb]

I agree with the comments above. I think what gets me about this is that they're selling it as a benefit to drivers when in reality it's the insurance companies that have the most to gain.

Re:Drive too much?

[Cederic]

Tell them you work from home and you drive an average of 20 miles a week. Your rate will drop.

Until they cross reference your stated mileage against your MOT certificate and you get prosecuted for insurance fraud.

It's fraud (and these days, money laundering) and you get spanked for it. Don't lie to insurance companies*.

*Disclaimer: I work for an insurance company.

Re:Drive too much?

[jamesh]

Until they cross reference your stated mileage against your MOT certificate and you get prosecuted for insurance fraud.

It's fraud (and these days, money laundering) and you get spanked for it. Don't lie to insurance companies*.

*Disclaimer: I work for an insurance company.

Even worse, they will only check when you actually want to claim - they'll quite happily take your money in the meantime.

Plead the 5th

[LSDelirious]

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...

To hell with that.

[Aryden]

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.

Only 200 miles

[AmiMoJo]

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?

Why is this not a good thing?

[c0mpliant]

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.

Texting

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it jack up your rates if you text or talk on the phone while driving?

MAPFRE YCar

[paugq]

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.

Re:Slippery sloppy slope

[LSDelirious]

Slippery Slope indeed! I don't see the govt requiring smartphone monitoring for the license (unless they just make it a part of "citizenship"), but I could easily see the 200 mile "trial period" being extended indefinitely so that you always had to be monitored to get discount, which like all the 1 sided contracts coporations push can be changed at any time, meaning any action they disapprove of could invalidate the "discount". And of course this would eventually morph into always be monitored to have a policy in the first place... and since insurance is required by law that might as well be the same as a license requirement in that without "voluntary" gps monitoring you won't be able to legally drive

Maybe if we explain real slowly to the foxtards how they are having to pay more than their fair share into the insurance pool to cover other drivers, we can get them all frothed up about this government mandated "Socialism" and get the requirement repealed lol

Re:Most stupid idea ever

[Cederic]

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.

Why do you think this? That happens to be the primary implementation in consumer markets due to the difficulty of accurately assessing individual risk, but it's also possible to go to an insurance company and get a very individualised tailored policy covering something nobody else on the planet has - e.g. a supermodel's legs.

Insurance is about sharing a risk over the largest population possible.

No. Insurance is about offsetting a risk. Sharing it over a large population is often a more efficient mechanism, but far from essential.

Re:break the law.

[Neil Boekend]

but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, canceled their insurance completely and drove without it.

Within a short time the automated license plate scanners would be connected to an insurance monitoring system and an automated fine-sending system.
What, do you think the appropriate hooks aren't there yet?

Re:break the law.

[91degrees]

Never understood this. Why crush the car? Why not sell it? Change the locks if necessary, but it's not like the car is being punished here.

Re:break the law.

[roman_mir]

Well, it's government, it is not supposed to be efficient or intelligent. It's about punishment, show of force, showing you who is the boss, telling you to go stuff it, showing you that they can crash you (or your car).

Re:break the law.

[chrb]

Mass civil disobedience happens when people really care about something enough to put their own liberty and property in danger. People don't care that much about their insurance company lowering their premiums in exchange for monitoring their driving behaviour, in fact, most good drivers are going to welcome this (and everyone thinks they're a good driver).

Re:break the law.

[roman_mir]

No, sure, people don't react and don't do anything because they are the proverbial frog that is being slowly cooked in a pan, not thrown into boiling hot water, they are boiled slowly.

However there will be a breaking point, I believe that breaking point is going to hit when the next economic crisis happens, so when the dollar crashes, the US bonds crash. But the unfortunate part is that if the people did try to get out of that pan right now, it would mean much less blood, less senseless violence. It's not like it's good to have a massive revolt, revolution, guillotines on the streets, etc., it's really bad, it's bad for the economy and society, not just for those, who are unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and have their heads chopped off.

It's bad for the society, because it will disrupt the economy to the point, where it may take not just years and decades to fix, it's better to kick the bad habits sooner rather than later.

Re:break the law.

[paiute]

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.

You just gave the for-profit prison industry a huge erection.

Re:break the law.

[Buchenskjoll]

I don't know where you live, but I live in a democracy. If I wanted to stop buying car insurance, and I knew I had all car owners behind me, I would start a political party, get elected and change the compulsory car insurance policy. Your whole idea of "how about if all of society rebelled against society" is weird and stupid.

Re:break the law.

[roman_mir]

If millions of people break the law, it's not a law. Basically laws are relying on voluntary compliance. For profit prisons are the only correct way to have prisons, but that's because there should be no government laws that put people to jail. The court system, the prison system, the policing, all of this should be private. The prison time should be paid by liability insurance and thieves shouldn't even be in prison, they should be forced to return the value of what they stole maybe multiplied by 3.

Only violent criminals should go to prison, and liability insurance should be used to pay for their prison time and the amount of coverage basically then is relative to the holding conditions (and I suppose charitable groups can give them some more money if they care).

AFAIC if you steal from me, I don't want you in prison, I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once.

Oh, and obviously gov't creates entire classes of prisoners that should never be in prison ever, under any circumstances. Drug laws? Drug war? That is what gives the woody to the private prisons that are private in name only, because they get government money and gov't laws to subsidise them and to create the prison population for them.

Re:break the law.

[Ash Vince]

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.

Here in the UK we are already there, they are fitting ANPR systems into most police cars already. They are tied into the motor insurance database already. If you are driving a car without insurance it bleeps at them and they pull you over. Once they pull you over you can then tell them your insurance company and they ring them up and check, tell them your name and they look that up and check or they take your car there and then.

You then have a couple of weeks to collect your car (and pay the tow charges) before it gets sold or crushed.

Most UK residents I speak to actually agree with this. Insurance is there so that if you drive into someone elses car they do not have to pay for the damage you caused, you do in the way of higher insurance premiums. It also is used to compensate any people you run over for their injuries. People who are avoiding insurance are braking the law, and should be punished but they should also not be allowed to continue breaking the law. Immediately confiscating their car works pretty well in this regard.

You can buy another car, but then the same thing will happen and eventually you will have to turn up in court and explain your revolutionary actions to a judge. He might even have a good laugh before banning your from driving for a few years and fining you far more than you would ever have paid in insurance. He might even throw in prison for a bit although even if he does not you can still go there anyway if you want by refusing to pay the fine.

The alternative to a system like this is one where some uninsured shit bag can crash into you and you have no way of getting a new car without paying for it yourself and spending a fortune on laywers to try and go after them for money they probably do not have anyway.

Driving without insurance Britain is a very bad idea. The only way to get away with it is make sure you only ever buy foreign cars with European number plates that they cannot lookup in the ANPR system :)

Re:break the law.

[Ash Vince]

Never understood this. Why crush the car? Why not sell it? Change the locks if necessary, but it's not like the car is being punished here.

Because most of the time the people who drive without insurance drive around in pieces of crap that nobody would pay for.

Legally though I believe they can sell the car if they think it is worth anything. But who would be stupid enough to pay up for a nice new car then not pay a few hundred quid to insure it? Most new cars come with free insurance anyway over here.

Re:break the law.

[LurkerXXX]

You won't have all car owners behind you. Speaking as somone who was hit by a moron who didn't have insurance, I was glad I did, so I wouldn't have to re-purchase my totaled brand new car because the moron wanted to text his girlfriend as he was driving.

Lots of us understand what insurance is for and want it. If you have a piece-of crap car, and no savings the person who you carelessly wreck into can go after to recover damages, sure, I'm sure you don't want to pay for insurance.

Re:Some game theory problems

[Lehk228]

you are neglecting to consider that the reduction in rate would be less than the reduction in frequency and magnitude of payouts. it certainly would be, that is how insurance companies make their money

Re:break the law.

[BasilBrush]

If a person doesn't have insurance it does not mean he cannot pay for the problems if he causes the problems on the road. What if you don't want to give up your income to an insurance company, instead you have your savings that you can tap into in case of an emergency?

Because the risk is unbounded. You might believe you have enough money to buy a new car for someone when your mistake totals their car. But what if you cause someone permanent handicap such that they need care and treatment for the rest of their lives. What if you handicap a bus load of people? What if you cause a train disaster? Then you're into many millions. Few people could afford to pay the cost of the harm they caused, and no-one would know whether they could or not until after the incident.

Your theory that mandatory insurance means expensive insurance is illogical. Healthy competition exists between insurers, nothing about it being a mandatory requirement removes that competition. Thus good value in insurance is inevitable. If not, then there is something wrong with the capitlist/libertarian belief that competition brings better value.

Re:break the law.

[h4rr4r]

Private courts? Welcome to slavery. You will always be guilty and you will always be working to pay that insurance that now costs 100% of what you make.

Welcome to debtors prisons reopening.

Why would violent criminals get insurance?

Re:break the law.

[mjtaylor24601]

1. If there are no government laws that should put people in prison, but some people (eg violent criminals) should still go to prison then who exactly decides what rules these theoretical private courts and police should enforce?

2. If the courts and the police are all private entities, who hires them? Who ensures their objectivity (or do you even care about that)? Who makes sure they don't abuse their authority? Hell, who defines what authority they even have?

3. If someone steals from you and can't repay the value + damages (that you seem to have arbitrarily defined without need for any laws that specify what those damages should be) what then? Death? They work it off slave labor style? What do you do if the thief declines to show up for his forced labor? What happens if I'd rather not have hardened criminals doing work around my home or business?

4. If private prison sentences are to be paid for by liability insurance who ensures that criminals will keep up on their insurance premiums? Because you know I'm sure that violent criminals (the only people that should go to jail remember) wouldn't dare walk around without paying for their insurance.

In short, I think this plan could use some more work.

Re:break the law.

[Miamicanes]

> Driving without insurance in the UK will get your car seized and crushed.

Maybe Britain is radically different from the US in this regard, but I'd be shocked if any such law weren't written in a way that made it impossible to actually DO that to any car that was secured by a bank loan, as opposed to a car that was paid off and driven by an uninsured owner. At the *very* least, the law would be written with "safe harbor" provisions that exempted any car used to secure a loan as long as the lender made a good-faith effort to enforce compliance (regardless of whether or not the lender's efforts were actually successful and effective).

Re:break the law.

[bws111]

Are you really that stupid? What if the other party is a pedestrian, or a passenger in a vehicle they don't own, or is standing at a bus stop or sitting at a sidewalk cafe? What you are in effect saying is that instead of you, the owner of a vehicle that can cause untold damage, being forced to have insurance to protect us from you, everyone else should have to have insurance to protect themselves from you.

Re:break the law.

[geekoid]

No. Most driver are bad driver 90% of the time.
We didn't evolve any real mechanism for being in a box hurtling down a road at 50 miles an hour. Most people, most of the time, aren't really paying attention. Not paying attention is what causes most auto accident.

Re:break the law.

[geekoid]

"If millions of people break the law, it's not a law"
Wrong, It's still a law. In fact, it's now a law with so many people breaking it, law enforcement can get away with cherry picking who gets arrested for breaking it.

" I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once."
Great, now people who are arrested will become defacto slaves. What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure groups of people wont get together and lie so they can get free slaves~

I don't think they should go to prison, I do think they should be part of a training / workgroup program. Clean our roads and parks, and maybe get a trade. THAT is far better for society then prison.

Re:break the law.

[geekoid]

Please learn some fucking history. Private jails and courts have ALWAYS been used by the powerful to indenture everyone else. ALWAYS.

We are seeing the problem with this in America, right now.
Who created 3 strikes laws? Private companies who own prisons.
Who keeps pushing longer sentences? Private companies who own prisons.
Who pushes for more arrests in poor neighborhoods? Private prisons.

Yes, private security force may be hired and you may end up in prison and your property may end up being leaned and seized to pay for the decontamination and other costs."
and since it will be a private court, you will always be found guilty.

"government does today that would be anywhere near as efficient "
The US government is far more efficient then people think. Have you read the account reports? budgets? I have, for government and private sectors. The US government is many times more efficient in most cases.
Compared to almost every other government? more efficient, and far more honest.

Maybe you should learn about the system before talking about it? no, no just keep being stupid.

" What did government do with BP spill? What, the 75 Million USD per incident liability limit? How did that help anybody?"
And not having a government BP would have done more? Or do you think the people would have more power and money then BP?
BTW, BP paid 45 BILLION, not 75 million.

Re:break the law.

[udachny]

Private jails and courts have ALWAYS been used by the powerful to indenture everyone else.

- only as far as they are enjoying help of government, because this simply means absence of competition and subsidy by the government.

And never mind the past, how about the current? The present? What is happening in USA with so called 'private prisons', that in reality are funded by the government stealing money from everybody? What about all the drug laws and all other laws that criminalize normal human behavior?

There was no time or place on this planet until NOW that there were so many people incarcerated in one so called 'democratic' country, and it's done with government passing laws that turn normal people into criminals, government subsidizing the private jails that only exist because of gov't subsidies and gov't laws that provide the jails with nearly infinite prison population.

Obviously you are not reading my comments, you are not thinking about the present, you are not seeing that what you are supposedly against is here, right now, and it's not about to become better.

All of those things - the 3 strikes laws, etc., all of this is only possible because the government is massively destroying individual freedoms (and from former comments of yours, I know that you are not a proponent of individual freedoms, you are some form of a socialist). Yet you are complaining about the private system that never put as many people into prisons as your government is doing today.

As to BP - they were given a 75 million USD limitation of liability. Just because the gov't backed down and BP paid more than that, doesn't change the fact that the government create the moral hazard.

Billions of dollars were taken from BP because of the public outcry, I wonder how much of that will be given back to BP somehow in various government deals, I didn't look into that yet, I should.

Re:break the law.

[BasilBrush]

You are mistaken, just like this guy, and my reply to him is the same as it is to you. Your insurance is there to cover you, not anybody else.

I'm not mistaken about anything. The topic of who's liability is covered wasn't part of my post. My post was regarding the fact that mandatory third party liability insurance is there to ensure that you can afford to pay when your errors when driving a car cause harm to others.

And in my country at least, the injured party does not sue you. It is you legal duty to provide your insurance details to the other person whenever you are involved in a road traffic accident, and they do indeed claim directly from your insurance. You do not have the option to personally refuse to pay for example. The insurance company pays them directly, not you.

It is your personal responsibility to cover yourself with enough insurance so that if something happens to you, you do not have to worry about paying for your bills and such.

It's more than your personal responsibility. it's your legal duty. The law is there to protect people from idiots that think they don't need insurance, and who then are not able to pay when they cause harm to others.

Your attitude to perfectly reasonable rules of law is more than a little cranky. Fraud? You're nuts.

Re:break the law.

[bws111]

Yes, let's just conveniently ignore little realities like the fact that the people most likely to not have insurance (especially if not mandated) are the ones who can not afford to pay for damage they cause.

Re:break the law.

[mcgrew]

This is a private property issue, nothing to do with government. If you are causing pollution to OTHER people's property and possibly even causing harm to other people's health, not yours, that's your problem, other people. Then it is up to those other people to sue you, that's all.

Since you're on slashdot I'll assume, perhaps mistakenly, that you're not stupid, but simply young (unlike that old rich Libertarian liar you've been listening to). If pollution could be stopped by lawsuits, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act wound never have had a reason to come into existance.

Let me tell you, son, the world doesn't work that way. Before 1970 you had to roll up the windows driving past Monsanto, even in a hundred degree weather and no AC, because the air literally burned your lungs. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of extremely poisonous waste was buried across the river from St Louis (I have a copy of the EPA report). Rivers, streams, creeks, and lakes were so polluted that they actually caught fire.

Yet there were no lawsuits, you would have to have proved that your cancer was caused by the polluters' waste, and that's about impossible. And you would have had to have been rich enough to hire better and more lawyers than Monsanto had on payroll already.

Yeah, I was one of the kids writing the officials I was too young to elect to try to affect government and effect change.

Your idea is a rich man's utopia and a normal man's hell. If you aren't pulling in half a million dollars per year and you're pushing for this anarchic rich man's utopia your'e not only a deluded fool, but incredibly stupid.

Re:break the law.

[shutdown -p now]

AFAIC if you steal from me, I don't want you in prison, I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once.

So in your hypothetical perfect world, the thief basically becomes a slave of the person he stole from until they can compensate the damage?

Okay, then. I wonder about the specifics. Like, when he's working for me, I'm the one setting the price of labor, right? And I know you're against minimum wage laws - so can I set it to, say, 1 cent per hour? Also, what about work time and conditions? I mean, the guy could be some slacker who refuses to work for me more than an hour every day, surely that's wrong? So can I force them to work every single moment they are awake until the debt is paid out?

I wonder, would you permit "selling" them, too? I mean, you can sell someone's debt to you today, logically this is quite similar. So if someone steals my car and they don't have insurance to pay for it, can I sell their debt (i.e. their obligation to work for me - effectively, my rights to them as a slave) to, say, some mining company? I just don't have anything that needs to be done requiring such copious amounts of manual labor, but clearly I should have some financial recourse, right?

Finally, I can't help but wonder what happens if my slave has a child. If all their wages are garnished to repay the debt, clearly they can't afford to so much as feed them. I would be quite eager to let them retain part of their earnings for themselves for those purposes, but only under certain conditions, like, say, requiring that the child in question also enters into a lifetime contract with me under similar terms to compensate for my lost repayments. This is obviously a valid arrangement, but do I only need the agreement of the kid, or must his parents also assent?

Re:break the law.

[mcgrew]

Government gives the companies green light to pollute on these so called 'public properties', which shouldn't exist in the first place, and if they do exist, no business can be allowed to do anything there.

So barges should be banned from rivers? Do you have any idea how much more everything would cost, especially food, if barges weren't allowed on the Mississippi or the Great lakes? Rivers were America's first highways, and for a long time its only highways.

How is anyone supposed to know who to sue when their well water winds up with some nasty chemical? How are you going to find out who caused the pollution, let alone prove they did it?

I'm afraid reality trumps your ideology, kid. It just doesn't work in the real world.