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Why Letting Your Insurance Company Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Kim Gittleson reports at BBC that car insurance firms like Progressive are trying to convince consumers that letting them monitor their driving behavior is actually a good thing. They say that the future of car insurance is not just being able to monitor individual drivers to give them lower prices, but also to make them better drivers. 'Now that we can observe directly how people drive, we think this will change the way insurance works,' says Dave Pratt, who says that Progressive has more than a trillion seconds of driving data from 1.6 million customers. '18-year-old guys pay a lot for insurance, but some 18-year-olds are really safe drivers and they deserve a better deal.' Better big data technologies, like the telematic driving data collected by car companies (PDF) or even information gathered from social media profiles, can help augment that risk profile. 'If I'm a driver that doesn't drive that frequently, and I have a pattern that would indicate that I drive more carefully than an average person with my profile, then I may be able to save 30-40% on my car insurance, and that's pretty significant,' says Joe Reifel. For now, using big data analytics for insurers is still in the early stages. Only 2% of the U.S. car insurance market offers an insurance product based on monitoring driving, but that proportion is projected to grow to around 10-15% of the market by 2017. And other countries, like Italy and the U.K., are already using the data to analyze not just risk profiles but also to determine who is at fault in car accidents. The future, most analysts agree is create a continuous feedback loop between insurers and consumers, so that consumers will react to the big data analyses that insurers perform and change their behavior accordingly. 'Bad drivers will at some point need to improve their driving or accept [having] to pay for the real risk they represent,' says Jacques Amselem."
> They say that the future of car insurance is not just being able to monitor individual drivers to give them lower prices
So look, I've got this bridge I've been trying to sell...
...is who decides what is safe driving?
Requiem for the American Dream
I assume what will happen is the insurance companies will find that 75% to 90% of their insureds are worse drivers in some way than average, and need to be charged more.
Never mind they'll see you regularly drive 10-15 over the limit and think you're a risk. How about those clowns who sit in the left lane, going up hill and don't maintain speed, so everyone jockeys to get around them in the right lane(s)? You don't see that in their data stream.
Lots more examples, which I predict this thread will include.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Progressive has more than a trillion seconds of driving data from 1.6 million customers.
Using a gigantic amount of very small units tends to make the whole thing meaningless. In more meaningful terms, Progressive has about 174 hours of data per customer.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Assuming their telemetry system is limited and that "safe = slow = low prices". That isn't always the case!! Slow may very well = dangerous in many occurrences.
Insurance rates (and prices in general) as set according to market statistics. I don't see how monitoring individual people will help those people.
Too much potential for individual people to get screwed, with no real benefit to the public as a whole. Forget it.
then you have nothing to fear, Citizen.
While I agree you're within your rights to let them track you for the associated discount, the premise behind this and the assumed acceptance by the privacy-less Generation is disturbing.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Only if they would ever actually lower the insurance pricing: obviously they are pushing this forward to get better profits, not to get the same profit for more work.
Without analytics, low-risk 18 year olds pay a lot of money to cover high-risk 18 year olds. With analytics, low-risk 18 year olds pay less (though not nearly as low as they should be paying) and high-risk 18 year olds are uninsurable. Why? Because you're going to have to substantially raise the price on those high-risk 18 year olds now that low-risk ones aren't covering the bill.
Now extend this logic to health care. Why is it okay to preach universal health-care and group insurance where low-risk cover the bill for high-risk, but the same isn't true for auto insurance? It's a slippery slope!
What are the parameters that define a "good" driver. Going below the speed limit on a highway in the left lane. Being lucky when you don't look right or left making a turn onto a street? Taking way to long to brake?
I've been driving for decades, I've put over 300,000 miles under me, but I bet those damn things would label me a bad driver for I accelerate firmly coming onto a highway, I don't brake forever coming off a highway, I tend to exceed the posted speed limit by a few miles when in the left lane and certainly when passing and i do my best to maintain situational awareness when behind the wheel.
These devices will do nothing to bring about "safe" driving because that term is still relative to skill, conditions, and environment. Flo can take her device and shove it somewhere dark, just not in my car.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
I live 2 miles up an unmaintained private logging road. An accelerometer would go nuts on all the bumps and make it look like I'm driving terribly, when in reality I'm creeping over holes, ruts and rocks at 5mph, in middle of nowhere, with nothing to hit except a moose.
Yeah... NFW am I getting this.
I don;t care what you heard. I don;t care what your independent-insurance-agent-father told you. I don;t care what any insurance industry flak says. I don;t care what the industry advertisements and propaganda say.
Insurance companies are NOT interested in reducing premiums. EVER!
If you hear it, it's a lie. Lowered car insurance premiums is a lie.Lowered health insurance premiums(ACA) is a lie.
If you don't know this, you are a fool!
1 trillion seconds over 1.6 million drivers is 7.2 days per driver. ( 1000000000000 / 60 / 60 / 24 / 1600000 = 7.2 )
Thank-you Captain Obfuscation.
Sent from my ENIAC
I'm a dreadful driver. I have a too powerful car (3.2ltr E class Mercedes). I accelerate too hard, brake late.
However I've not had a crash in 16 years and have never made an insurance claim. I've also have a clean uk license.
Put me onto a monitored system my insurance will shoot up. Why would I bother?
How can cutting the premiums of safe drivers work in practice? Isn't the idea of insurance that the premiums of those who don't file claims is what pays for the claims of others? If they cut all the premiums of the safe drivers, where is the money for the claims of the unsafe going to come from? My guesses: they are not paying out many claims since they just drop unsafe drivers, or perhaps they will simply recoup the money by raising the premiums of any driver who files a claim. In the latter case at least, your 'insurance' is perhaps no more useful than a credit card.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
This question needs a detailed answer.
How does the company adjust rates based on these profiles? They need to offer very specific calculations.
The insurance company should also publish the anonymous data so users can do their own comparisons.
If they are using this for legitimate purposes and they want to be a positive influence on their customers, they must be much more open.
Otherwise, it's just another marketing ploy.
I can't wait until self driving cars put these parasites out of business.
we think this will change the way insurance works,
So if they find I'm a good driver, never getting in any accidents, maintain a good distance between myself and other vehicles, don't get any tickets, they'll give me a huge discount, at least 50%, from what I'm paying now, right?
*crickets*
Insurance company: We're sorry, we don't operate that way.
Me: Yeah, thought so. Just another scam to hand over my money to a private company.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Criticizing American's at every turn and then getting anal probed by their own government and being fine with it.
The health insurance industry did this about twenty years ago (ish. I don't remember exactly). Instead of binning people by risk and associated cost, they starting looking at people on an individual level and simply denying those who might not be profitable. It sounds good when you're angry at irresponsible drivers, and it certainly makes money for the insurance companies, but it doesn't work when you're dependent on cars on driving to make your infrastructure work and when insurance is an integral part of that (required in many states).
1. Install GPS recording devices into cars
2. tell people that it is actually good for them
3. profit!
Wow, must be first time ever!
But what makes me a "safer driver" I've been in two accidents in my 26 years of driving. Rear ended once at a traffic light, and the other one the guy spun out across four lanes of traffic to slam into my truck, after I'd had time to come to a complete stop. And I haven't had a speeding ticket in over a decade. But I still have a lead foot, and tend to drive above the speed limit. Would I qualify as a "Safe Driver"? I have a car chip and monitor my vehicle for performance and maintenance issues, it lets me see the kind of data they would collect: average speed, highest speeds, acceleration profiles (rabbit starts, something I try to resist for fuel efficiency reasons but often realize I've done after the fact) hard breaking events etc. . .
Okay maybe for an 18 year old male to maybe get a lower rate. But otherwise, hell no.
My safe driving status should be based on what really makes for safe driving, and they haven't yet made the ODBII compliant device that monitors how alert and aware I am of the traffic around me. Of how often I check my mirrors and blind spots, of how I look ahead to anticipate problematic intersections or road conditions. Until they can monitor those, they can't really monitor safety. Speed is not a safety factor. Hard breaking may be, but it's still missing a ton of variables that explain the cause. Any insurance co that asks for this is losing a customer. I have a monitor on my vehicle already, but for my personal use and only my use.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
This is interesting.
While health insurance is moving away from personal responsibility, car insurance is moving more toward it. This probably makes sense because people are not at fault for many health conditions. But people are often at fault for driving accidents.
I wonder how long before we pay an insurance company for a car wellness program. Will they make sure I am checking my oil and rotating my tires regularly?
Oh sure, its great to let your insurance company track and monitor your driving habits. Safer drivers MAY pay less but i'll bet that less safe drivers simply wind up paying EVEN MORE than they do now.
These are businesses. They exist to generate a profit. Which is more profitable? Charging safe drivers less or bad drivers more? It doesn't matter if you are a safe driver, your rates eventually will go up. It makes far more sense to charge bad drivers more immediately rather than to reduce the cost to safe drivers, after all everyone is used to the current rates and like every other industry the insurance companies collude to keep prices high.
Now, that's all fine and dandy. But adding more surveillance in your everyday lives is ridiculous. All it takes is the LEO's knowing this data exists before they start pushing for warrants and access (or worse warrantless access) to it to make their jobs easier. Get a listing of all vehicles in X area at Y time on Z date, and start from there hunting for someone to force into a plea bargain. Job done, citizens safe, and did you see the hooters on that chick?
When ever someone offers you the opportunity for lower rates by providing more information, what they are really offering is the opportunity to either eliminate you from their liability pool or raise your rates. Insurance is, in an efficient market like auto insurance, a zero sum game. Those whose rates get lowered must be offset by those with higher rates unless the overall claims volume is reduced.
Bad drivers already are in a feedback loop from their insurers. Anyone who has received a moving violation or been in an accident feels the pressure of insurance premiums. It's the only reason I get concerned about a speeding ticket - $150 for getting caught doing 12-15mph over on the freeway is annoying; having my premiums go up $400/year for 2 or more years is far more punishment than the courts are doling out.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Since no one else has made it. We have the feds tracking every other aspect of our lives, is letting them track our exact driving habits really such a good idea?
As the law is explictely in the US and secretly in the UK, the government can have complete access to the data without even telling anyone about it. Installing a tracking device will be a completely moot point, as it is done "voluntarily".
So basically, even though many studies have shown speeding alone is mostly not a cause of car accidents, as long I stick below the speed limit, the insurance companies will reward me for being a good driver, regardless of how many people I cut off, how many lanes I swerve between lanes, how little I use my turn signals, or how much I update my facebook status and generally piss off other people while driving, not to mention how drunk or high I am while doing so.
Great idea there guys.
and the devices are temporary.
The wife and I currently use Progressive and we did their little driver-monitoring program a year or so ago. Our vehicles were only monitored for a couple months.
We ended up saving some money (Progressive was already lower than all the competition we had scoped out, but the program made it even a little lower).
Of note were the reasons given:
1. The devices were able to confirm our relatively low miles-driven.
2. The devices found that we drove during "safe" times of day (if I remember right, it's the wee hours of the morning that are the "unsafe" times, probably due to increased rates of drunk driving).
3. My wife saved a little more than me, due to my slightly higher incidences of "rapid stops." Apparently I should've punched through those yellow lights to save time AND money.
Would you like also to monitor my oxygen levels while I sleep to make sure I'm "healthy"? How about the way I vote? Am I not voting for candidates that are safe for your industry?
It has nothing to do with safe driving it is just another way to mine money from hard working people. I will always try not to do business with a company that wants to monitor any part of my private life. Screw you, and you damn well can insert that device of yours in an inappropriate manner.
Insurance isn't supposed to be about profit, it's supposed to be about cost-management. Say that for every 1,500 people, one of them will be in a car accident each year. The average cost of a car accident in terms of legal costs, replacement, etc., we'll say is $50,000 -- or about $136.98 per day. Let's add a 15% administrative cost -- that is, the cost to hire people and collect the funds. That's $157.53 -- Now divide that by 1500 and multiply it by 30.5 (the average length of a month) you get $3.20 per month per person.
And that's how insurance is supposed to work: Distribute the costs so that the one poor bastard that would otherwise be broke, bankrupt, and his life ruined, avoids that fate because the risk is distributed over a large number of people. The administrators take home a reasonable profit -- that is their salaries plus maybe 5%, which is about average profit for a successful business, and you call it a day. Then you only need to manage the edge cases -- that 1% that gets in lots of accidents for no apparent reason. And those should be pretty easy to detect... since, you know, they're getting in accidents a lot. Set a threshold beyond which it's statistically improbable it could be random chance just kicking one guy's ass, and you're all set.
There is no need for any of the rest of this. The reason they put it in, is the same reason our health care went to absolute and total shit: They're determining risk based on the individual, not the group, and maximizing profit. That is, insurance today has become about avoiding risk, not absorbing it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
If you reguarly drive 10-15 over the limit, you ARE a risk.
If you're a sheep.
If you like being a Serf.
In that case, it's great!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sure they are, if the decrease is offset by the revenue from additional customers. Same as any business.
I drive often, I love acceleration, I love breaking tightly and I love nasty turns...
And due to winter, I love hand brakes and drifting...
Not a good thing for me...
You cannot predict how data will be used, and there is a significant chance
that the data will be used in a way that you find unpleasant or financially
detrimental in a possibly extreme fashion.
What's next, an article on the benefits of eating shit, as exemplified by the
posting habits of Slashdot editors ?
Let's jump straight to the ad absurdum argument. Suppose insurance companies develop a way to predict the exact future of an individual, and so determine exactly the amount he/she will cost them over the next year, down to the fractional penny. And so, of course, that becomes your rate (with overhead, of course). This is labelled as "good driver discounts" or "healthy lifestyle kickbacks" or something like that, but the point is the same: give rate cuts to the safe people and stick the dangerous people with the burden. Of course, every insurance company does this, because otherwise they would be charging the safe majority more than their competitors, and risk losing business (which would then give them no base to subsidize with, and so they would no longer even be able to do so).
At this point, is there a point to having insurance at all? The difference between having insurance and not is just when you pay, plus whether there is overhead, and whether you have to submit to having your brain scanned, your genome sequenced, and the bumps on your forehead measured.
In all seriousness, at this point insurance companies are quite obviously trying to not act like what I used to think insurance companies were. The model they are pursuing would ultimately lead every rational person to not purchase insurance, and will lead to a model where every single insurance customer is slightly worse off than they would be without insurance (as opposed to our current system, in which most customers are worse off, but a few customers are significantly better off). They have a captive market, and are competing for simply being the best alternative to the competition.
Because first it will be just for the insurance companies to use, to save you money, no really!
And then the police will start issuing warrants to get specific driving data, to combine with other meta data, to track your movements.
And then the NSA will start sending secret letters for all data to be added into their system...
And then?
CAPTCHA: Beyond
First, does acceleration and braking correlate perfectly with insurance losses?
Sure it seems intuitive that a speed demon is riskier, but it is really the skill and diligence of the driver that determines risk.
Second, the entire point of insurance is to spread risk across a population. The only fair departure from that is to penalize
the person that makes a lot of claims; Until that minority report computer can predict our accidents in advance too....
correct. they only want lower premiums to attract more customers so they can sell more policies and make more profit
I took issue with Progressive when they suggested I place their device on my car. I switched to Gieco as a direct result. Who wrote this anyway, that Flo lady? Hope others also object and change insurance providers. This is too invasive as far as I am concerned.
If there is any criteria of who gets "the discount" as opposed the "the penalty", the criteria is going to get tighter and tighter over the years to the point where only a scant few "good drivers" qualify and everyone else gets classed as a bad driver and gets the penalty rates.
repeat as many times until you get it "They are doing this to make more money". Nobody's rates will go down much, but they will have enough statistics to raise your rates a ton.
The car insurance folks are just trying to improve the granularity of their risk calculations. The eventual will be marginally lower rates for low risk drivers, and denied coverage for the worst. Soon as that happens, some "progressive" politician would start screaming about driving being a fundamental "right", and risk based insurance rates as an infringement on that "right". I see an "O`bama-care" version of car insurance coming within 5 years.
If you reguarly drive 10-15 over the limit, you ARE a risk.
That would possibly have some truth to it if the speed limits were set with safety in mind.
If they're really looking to see who is likely to be involved in an accident they should let customers opt-in to a smartphone app that detects when the phone is traveling in a car and report whenever the phone's cell (without bluetooth or headset) or data services are being used.
They can do this kind of assessment with regular driving test/assessment, I might agree to that to get a better deal. Why do they want continuous monitoring.
It would be also a good idea to scrap one-size-fits all speed limits and allow drivers to go faster depending on their skill. (same deal, regular assessments would do, voluntary - for those who'd want their limits increased)
.. the NSA or whatever will thank you for your support in this matter. Quietly without you knowing but thank you none the less.
yes, and then the GOP will take the opposition's unprecedentedly low approval ratings and decide to run either Fred Phelps Jr. or some Gordon Gekko clone, and turn a possible landslide victory into a six percentage point loss
"You now have one point remaining on your license."
Someone I know has a Progressive monitor plugged into her ODB-II port. It beeps to "berate" her when she is driving "badly".
Apparently slowing down to stop at a red light is driving badly.
Also, slowing down quickly to avoid an accident is also driving badly.
She wants to throw it out the window, because the only time it ever "complains" is when she either stopped at a red light, or avoided crashing into someone who cut her off.
If insurance companies want drivers to use these things, they really have to come up with a better definition for "bad driving" than "slowing down quickly".
Insurance companies only exist because the government makes them mandatory. Seriously if I'm paying 100$/month for insurance, I could instead have put it in the bank and got a used car every 2-4 years. I already don't want you in my business, why would I let you track me?
I am a Progressive customer. I elected to join their Snapshot program. They sent me a dongle to plug into my car's computer port. The web page available to me showed my speed, miles driven, and hard brake applications. They watched me drive for four weeks and rewarded me with a 30% discount that they applied immediately to my credit card. They then sent me a prepaid mailer to return the dongle to them. I have enjoyed that discount for two years running without any further monitoring of my driving habits.
Suspect them all you want, but a very short period of surveillance saved me a lot of money and continues to do so.
OK. Enough of the FUD; I use Progressive and I got the 30% discount.
I drive, on average, 10-15 MPH above the posted speed limit. But I leave - minimally - 2 seconds of stopping time in front of me. I'm more likely to merge going 65mph in a 60mph than 55mph, unlike many other drivers - it vastly helps traffic flow when you merge going at the same ambient speed as other drivers. Definitely not a leadfoot. Just observant.
They track when you drive, and number of "hard" stops. I had the beeper go off ONCE - when I was cut off by a driver. People will have sudden stops - deer crossings, other drivers. One or two isn't an automatic penalty. I was with another driver, and he had THREE "beeps" while stopping. Reason is he tailgates during normal driving. If the car in front slams on the brakes, he does too. It just measures the delta D over delta T, and if the ratio is too large, it determines it was a "hard stop". Like I said - you are allotted a certain number of these based on normal driving procedures.
The other part of the discount comes from when you drive - I had a second job during second shift, and drove back during the "cautionary" zone more nearly 3 times a week. I still got full discount.
Before everybody goes SCREAMING about how they're getting reamed a new asshole because Insurance Company X will know if they've gone 1.5 mph over the posted limit, settle the fuck down.
How about this? What about a sensor in front of the car, measuring current speed and distance to car in front? If you spend 0-5% of the time within 2 second stopping distance, you get 0 discount; all the way up to 90-100% of the time getting a (max) discount. That's about what the Snapshot was measuring. Jesus Christ the sky is falling!!!
Relevant link from Progressive
So, how long till someone comes out with a device that sits between these things and the car, and makes everyone a perfect driver?
No, the additional revenue from additional customers is just additional revenue. They have no incentive to reduce the premiums of existing customers. These are businesses looking for more profit and if anyone has direct review-able evidence of any insurance company reducing premiums because of an influx of customers, please share.
That really depends on what road you're driving on.
10km/h over the limit when the limit is 40km/h is a pretty significant difference. The places where the limit is 40 are usually that way for a reason, which makes it even more dangerous. 10km/h over the limit when the limit is 120km/h, however, is not nearly as bad.
Or if you prefer mph... 35 in a 25 zone versus 85 in a 75 zone. Argument's the same, even though the numbers may be different.
this has never been about offering discounts. The monitoring technology is used as a statistical predictor of quarterly profits vs loss and helps drive the overall cost of insurance, not your discounts. the 15% discount, a maximum you can earn with the progressive program, is a $150 discount on a thousand dollar per year policy that still puts full-coverage insurance far outside the realm of the average 18 year old. many 18 year olds pay significantly more than this.
As a gay man having recently moved to the midwest from a major metropolitan area, I can attest that no such monitoring system will ever help me. because its illegal for me to get married, I pay more insurance despite having a 10 year clean record of driving. In my larger city I used zipcars for longer trips, purchasing their insurance when required. This constitutes, in every insurance provider ive checked, a policy increase for not having maintained insurance. thats right, i get a penalty for not consuming a product consistently enough. all this for the privilege of any event of an accident, in which ill pay the deductible out of pocket and wait for reimbursement because thats how insurance works if youd like your personal transportation out of the shop. Subrogation, the humiliating process of waiting for your expenses to be reimbursed, can take years.
do yourself a favour, if you want lower insurance drive a smaller or older automobile. something within the past 10 years isnt likely to break down with regular maintenance. It also allows you to come to grips with reality. Regardless of make model or features, driving in a car in the 21st century sucks. traffic is dismal, road etiquitte is nonexistent, your operating costs are also proportional to the vehicles pedigree, and you open the door for a world of new expenses like parking tickets, towing fees, and hungry meters. Stop waiting for some mega corporation to offer a discount for loyalty or a pittance for the invasion of your privacy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
Let's repeat that to reiterate how business works in a market economy...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
There is no negotiated "fair price" between the consumers and the companies that we're holding hands and working toward together. Rather...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
Reducing the insurance companies' risk (and hence profit) in no way alters the basic market fact here, that being...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
Accepting that Progressive should be telling you who your friends should be, and exhorting you to disdain and avoid "rate suckers" in your life, should be considered within the context of...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
Seeing your insurance company as your personal religion, to whom you should go to for "accident forgiveness", still should not alter your perception of the basic reality here, which is...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
In reality, all you are doing is increasing the insurance industry's profits, and there is no reason to expect, and the ads carefully suggest, but avoid committing to, anything other than...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
When we get to the point of individuals fully submitting all captureable data about themselves, and the resulting modeling means that "insurance" does not mean anymore "pooling risk"--and the companies make risk-free profit, always, yet claim to be taking risks, and for the purchaser, it is -always by definition- economically better to put your money in a mattress than pay insurance premiums, because the risk has already been calculated, and corporate profits added to that, remember...
Insurance companies will charge as much as they can, for every individual, always.
So, no thanks.
My insurance company offers this, but my broker told me it wouldn't help in my case. I commute 26 miles each way to work, and this "safe driver program" is graduated based on average mileage per month. Because I drive 1000 miles a month (to say nothing of weekend trips) even with perfect driving wouldn't even save a dollar a month. I also live and commute in an area with a large urban deer population. The deer appear out of nowhere and enter the roadway unexpectedly. This leads to many abrupt stops and quick swerves. These monitoring devices just know what the car tells them, not the external circumstances. This is even before I object to it over privacy rights. I don't want a record of everywhere I drive. If the insurance company stores this data, it is likely that law enforcement (including the alphabet soup) will have access to it. Will I be marked a person of interest because I ate at a Pakistani restaurant? Will I be targeted because I frequent the state liquor store (I enjoy cooking with wine, but don't drink)? I have a big yard, so I go to a nursery and buy fertilizer on a regular basis - am I threat? Do I want the government to know that I visit with non-citizens on a daily basis? How long until this voluntary participation becomes mandatory?
This is now lowering good drivers insurance. It's forcing the masses to let insurance companies monitor them. If I'm a good driver and refuse this monitoring they'll eventually take away my license/insurance and because of the way the law is written there will be no way to legally drive a car.
This is dangerous. Cameras are also dangerous and the people just haven't come to recognize that having eyes on there every move will eventually put them in danger when it's no longer convenient for 'corporations', 'government', 'people in power', etc.
We already see prosecutors abusing our legal system to put harmless individuals away, murder people, and worse. The US government has even sanctioned torture. Hackers have been thrown in jail without trial for years, had there limbs broken, and other groups have been put in dangerous positions within prisons such that they have been murdered. Society isn't outraged and that is disturbing. Society goes and says things like “he got what he deserved”. Yet in that whole time there is no compassion for those most vulnerable. Those disabled and handicapped. People don't choose to go to prison. They end up there because of personal faults. Things they're most often not truly responsible for.
How long until someone figures out how to feed these dongles false data? "Yuppers, I'm just a little old geek who only drives to Radio Shack on Sundays". You may need to spoof the GPS data too, but this could all be done in the comfort of home anyway. No need for it to actually be in a car.
In my town they just installed red light cameras, the ones that take your picture if you run a red light. Did this reduce the number of people running red lights?
No.
It increased the number of people slamming on their brakes at a yellow and getting rear ended for fear of getting a ticket.
Insurance companies have a different metric for determining what a good driver is. I seek to minimize my costs of driving which include not only my probability of being in an accident, but the time I spend on the road. Insurance companies don't care about my time costs. Additionally, they are interested in maximizing profit, not just minimizing cost. One way to maximize profit is to expand the market for your product, even in the face of higher costs. This expanded market is made up largely of people who don't place as high a value on their time spent commuting and as a result, drive more slowly. And get in my way.
I'd like to see an emphasis on getting the 'worst' drivers off the road. This would ease congestion, lower transportation costs and push otherwise unwilling riders onto public transportation. But that would cut into the insurance industries bottom line. So they will bias the definitions of good and bad drivers to keep the maximum numbers of drivers buying their product, so long as the accidents they are involved in are of the low expense kind*.
*Grandpa driving up onto the curb or through some flower beds. As long as its done slowly, most kids can run out of the way.
Have gnu, will travel.
So it won't even matter if you actually have more accidents, only if they can make statical guesses about your likelihood of accidents... How much do you want to bet that they will find risk in every driving style? Oh you drive too slow, oh you drive too fast, oh you don't keep up with traffic, oh you don't merge with urgency, you accelerate to fast, etc, etc, etc. Then you can never argue against it because they are the one with the "big data". This is standard policy sir, nobody else is complaining about it, it's just you vs us. Would you like arbitration with our script readers?
It is nice that Fred Phelps Jr. decided to follow a different path than his father by affiliating with a different political party. Fred Phelps ran for office in Kansas several times as a Democrat. From wikipedia "He has occasionally run for political office as a Democrat. In the election for United States Senator for Kansas in 1992, he received 49,416 votes (30.8%) in the Democratic primary, coming in second after Gloria O'Dell (who subsequently lost to later presidential candidate Bob Dole)." It is disingenuous to just assign people who you disapprove of to the other party. Fred Phelps is often referred to as right wing, but his political party choice was the Democrats.
...and that's about the extent of how much I want to see this happening. Fuck it, we already have law enforcement etc. for this, I don't need the insurance company trying to shaft me because I had to speed to avoid some 8 wheeler going 120Kmh on a highway in a snow storm. That's the problem, the device looks at your driving only, and not the environment (drivers, etc.) surrounding you at the time you had to drive. In many places everybody goes over the speed limit by say 20 kmh and trying to go within speed limit can actually be more dangerous than going with the fow.
Either way it's a bad idea. Starting to hear commercials for this in Canada, I always laugh at the "you could save 20% on your car insurance" claims. All they'll do instead is raise premiums for those who opt out...
The insurance companies just leave your insurance at the same rate and then just hike everyone else's rates.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/11/14/giving-americans-cheap-car-insurance-without-bankr.aspx
Devil's advocate here.
Maybe your friend doesn't pay enough attention to her surroundings (and stop tailgating and/or riding in blind spots), and that's why she keeps having to slam on her brakes to avoid hitting the cars in front of her at red lights, and it could also explain whey she keeps getting "cut off" by drivers that didn't realize she was riding in their blind spot (I'm not exusing them for cutting her off; I'm saying she can modify her behavior to keep other drivers from cutting her off).
Not only no, but hell, no.
The amount of personal tracking which is tolerated and encouraged has far exceeded what is sane. I'd rather pay more yearly for anonymous driving habits, thanks. While I'm not one to drive badly, tolerating more tracking in our everyday lives is quickly leading to absolutely no privacy, semi-anonymity, or using pseudonyms.
'Bad drivers will at some point need to improve their driving or accept [having] to pay for the real risk they represent,' says Jacques Amselem."
Seems to me then that the best thing would be for NO ONE to have car insurance and just pay for their mistakes. That way, you don't have the added overhead of paying someone else to pay for your mistakes. Overhead COSTS money, not saves it.
"You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" The monitoring of everybody's daily routine and exceptions therefrom is already much collected from phone company logs. Now others wish to monitor my speed and location, or know if I diverted to an address to pick anybody up or made a stop at the doughnut shop. (Whoops, my health insurance is also watching for my own good.). Do you believe for one moment that this data will be well protected? Will not this data be shared, stolen, published, cross indexed, analyzed and saved forever by various government and enforcement agencies "for our own good?" This data will, as phone records now, be brought into court as evidence. Disabling it will one day be crime. Do not agree with VICKY from I Robot, do not believe that insurance companies have other than profit as a primary objective, and do not go gently into that dark night!
And, yes, I am using a proxy and change my MAC often.
Just make it voluntary and transparent.
What a laugh.
Yeah, because there's no competition in the insurance industry.
Oh, wait..
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Alright, I have been trying to figure out who to gripe about this for weeks now. And low and behold this post hits good old Slashdot.
My wife signed us up for Progressive's "Snapshot" about 4 months ago, and I have been driving around with the under dash device since it arrived. We have about 2 more months to go. Here are my impressions so far.
1> The device only seems to care about breaking rates. It gives an audible beep whenever you decelerate at greater than 7mph/second, without the ability to log where you are it can't correlate speed limits or traffic patterns.
2> It does not seem to take into consideration terrain or slope. I can safely decelerate at greater than the require speed when going up hill, and frequently do.
3> it does not take into account state recommended yellow light timing. Here in the state of Texas our Department of Transportation recommends yellow lights last 1 second for every 10 miles per hour of the speed limit. This means that they expects us to be able to safely decelerate at 10mph/second. But they also suggest yellows last no more than 6 seconds, meaning on roads with a speed limit of 70mph or greater the expected rate of deceleration is even greater. So either I need to be precognitive and start breaking before the light turns yellow, or I decelerate at 7mph/second and end up somewhere past the light that I am stopping for.
This leads me to one conclusion. This device is not intended to benifit consumers. It is a thinly veiled Pavlovian training device to reduce accidents, benefiting Progressive. But since the "safety" standards are so far off of regulatory recommendations it is nearly impossible for anyone to actually meet the standard and get the promised discount.
I have considered contacting the state insurance board, or a class action lawyer, but I don't know that either would help.
Yet another example of "hey do tihs, it's good for you!" is a laughably transparent rendition of "Hey, do this! it's good for us".
This is only good for you if you're an angelic driver (and only until you make a single mistake, regardless of tickets or accidents.). The more accurately these insurance companies can measure risk, the more apt they are to stick it to anyone who doesn't fit their models.
the whole premise of insurance is to spread unknown risk over a population of people paying into the system, as that risk becomes better 'known', the more likely adverse selection is to occur . And the benefits of that better measurement are not accrued to the insured. So while the perfect driver can save a few bucks here and there, a service that realistically everyone over the age of 21 is legally mandated to have (mass transit/pedestrian folk, ok cool -- but at some point in the past year i'm willing to bet you've relied on someone else's car/insurance) will necessarily become more expensive to everyone else.
Oh, and NSA/FBI/data privacy, yadda yadda.
What do people here think about getting rid of forced car insurance?
I get that it would suck if you were in a collision that wasn't your fault, but I believe it'd be better for everyone on the whole if we ditched something which mostly benefits the insurance companies in the end.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Bullshit. Reduced premiums mean their coverage is more attractive than the other guys, which attracts more customers.
(Of course you don't care what other people say, that means you have to face facts.)
Bad drivers accelerate quickly and brake a lot, because they don't anticipate the road ahead of them. You can monitor those two things, for a start, plus their speed, to see if they are 'bad drivers'. i.e. if you know your client lives on a road with a 30mph speed limit, surrounded by other roads with a 30mph speed limit, and the nearest 40mph road is one mile away, if they accelerate fast and go over 30mph within the first minute of driving (for example), you know they are habitual speeders, etc.etc.
There is no need to track a car's position.
Secondly, once this takes off, those who DON'T opt for it are going to come across as the ones who have 'something to hide', i.e. bad driving habits.
You sound reasonable but GP says you must be a fool so I guess that's settled.
they aren't interested in paying out claims either, and do everything in their power to either reduce claim amounts or deny them entirely.. even legitimate ones.
True
Only true while insurance companies are sticking their fingers in the health pie.
A true universal health scheme has no need for insurance companies.
In 2031, President Chelsea Clinton-Obama III will abolish individual car insurance (if you like it, you can't keep it!) and make you buy comprehensive car insurance through the government web site.
I never understood how if it is legally required for every motorist to have insurance the resulting insurance still requires coverage for other motorists who are uninsured.
No, that's not true. Insurance companies are interested in Profit not Sales. So, if you pay $100/month for car insurance, but you get into an accident every year that they have to cover, they hate that.
The behavior that they want is for you to pay $90/month ("safe" driver discount) and NEVER get into an accident as a "safe" driver. Therefore, they pocket all the money.
These devices are nothing more than yet another way the insurance company can screw you over and deny claims. It has nothing to do with safe driving or better rates. They will pick out the smallest detail this device provides to prove that somehow you broke the contract and therefore get no coverage regardless of the actual circumstances.
Never, ever, agree to put one of these in your car.
“Bad drivers will at some point need to improve their driving or accept [having] to pay for the real risk they represent” ... yeah, right. If you drive at night, such as for work, Progressive will penalize you no matter how good a driver you are and how safely you drive and how many precautions you take against the possible hazards caused by darkness. They will toss you in the same premium bin with the partiers and drunks. Screw that.
Snapshot can't measure driving quality. It measures speed and distance travelled and sudden stops. Presumably if I'm driving at night and take a longer route going 75mph on a wide-open freeway, instead of driving 35mph on the shorter twisty two-lane country road with far more hazards from drivers crossing the center line or deer jumping into the road, Snapshot will penalize me for it. Again, screw that.
How will the insurance companies invade our privacy next? Put cameras in our houses to monitor our activities all in the name of lowering our premium?
You damn well that the insurance companies are pushing this not for the "carrot" of reduced rates, but the much bigger "stick" of being able to nail bad drivers with higher rates.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Obviously they are interested in lowering premiums, just as long as they can maintain their profit. Lower premiums attract more customers, improve customer satisfaction.
The way they want to reduce premiums is by reducing risk. That way they can keep profit levels the same.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If they actually use their big data for complete answers and trust its monetary conclusions, it's all positive like they've said. To do that, they need their data crunching to strongly correlate patterns of driver behavior to actual insurance dollars-lost amounts in accidents per mile/driver/year/etc. That will have to include a dollar amount on human lives (in addition to the legal/medical costs), but the insurance industry is used to calculating that already.
Where this will get shady and problematic is when humans interfere too much in the data processing, intentionally or otherwise. Then you'll see cases where safer drivers get charged more, and that's a real shame.
The humans will probably be defining the metrics themselves. If they tell big data to look for correlations in a certain list of factors (% of miles spent more than Z over the speed limit? How erratic is their steady-state gas pedal?), the real patterns might lie in other unidentified factors which the list is only a poor and inaccurate proxy for, which will result in some variable percentage of miscarriages of pricing justice based on data. To work around this problem, you need to keep human decision making out as much as you can. Basically, throw all the data you can at it without trying to be picky. Maybe it turns out that the smoothness (delta-acceleration) of one's steering wheel movements are a much more precise indication of driving safety than speedometers-vs-limits. In other words, don't try to make Big Data pick A, B, or C of your forgone conclusions: try to let it find new factors in a sea of raw data, most of which might seem uninteresting to you.
Ignoring for a moment my basic premise above, I'll give you my take on where the good data lies, FWIW. From my professional driving time (learning and instructing), I can already give you a better guess than most insurance stats people would: the most important sensor input will be a camera that can see the driver's face and track (a) the direction their eyes are looking and (b) approximate focal length of the lens (how far into the distance they're looking in that direction. If you were to feed that data (correlated with basic car data: steering angle, speed, accel/brake pedals, etc), I'm fairly positive it would come out on the top of the safety list. Safe drivers are constantly scanning the road: in all mirrors, miles ahead, off to the sides, etc. Mostly it happens in eye movements rather than head movements. The eyes flit constantly between visual reference points while the brain assesses risk and makes informed decisions. The ones who stare at their radio (!), iphone (!!), kids in the back seat (!!!), ogle pretty drivers in the next lane over (!!!!), read books (WTF?), etc are basically blacked out on information that's vital to their safety for way longer stretches than is remotely safe. They're the primary cause of accidents, statistically, IMHO.
It's an awful idea because their rates are still their rates. What happens when these purported discounts go the other way because of where you live or where you drive or that one time you were speeding.
What happens if they decide that you drive too much on the highway or in other states or in Canada or Mexico?
What happens when they realize that drive too much at night when most accidents and DUIs occur?
What happens if they track that you make too many stops and they assume you're running your own gypsy cab?
Nah it's bullshit. Rates are supposed to be based on outcomes not on insurance companies trying to micromanage those outcomes.
Sure - what can go wrong by allowing a device to track your every move?
Yes - some cars have black boxes in them. But I don't believe those are consulted until after the, eh, crime.
Although - I suppose my cell phone is already tracking my every move - in far more detail than my car ever would. Google certainly knows where I've been and even guesses where I want to go next. Friday at 5pm it pops up, "20 minute drive to [girlfriend] house with traffic"
I downloaded my insurance company's app and then took my car to a race track just to screw with their data.
Next stop, Orwellville.
In some places there is no requirement for slower traffic to drive in the right hand lane.
Because I have a heavy foot when it comes to driving. Today is a perfect example:
On I-95 in RI. I look down and keeping up with traffic I'm at 80MPH. But I do tend to leave plenty of space between my vehicle and the ones in front of me. But the thing is, these devices are either using GPS and so going to flag me for speed violations, or they're using ODB-II info and they're still gonna screw me. So I'll just pay the additional and tell them to stuff their once size fits all device straight where the sun doesn't shine.
So, I'm cruising along the highway at normal/safe/legal highway speeds. There's an on-ramp just ahead, with a car about to merge onto the high-speed roadway.
The merging driver should be going the full speed of the roadway. But he isn't. Because he's not actually a good driver. Instead, he's still travelling at on-ramp speed -- 20% below the highway limit, not at merging speed.
The safest thing for me to do is to accellerate much faster to get past the merge area before he gets to it. I have the room in-front of me, not behind me. The surface is safe, the visibility is safe, my car is safe and capable, and I'm very alert. So I accellerate to 30% over the limit for the 4 seconds it'll take.
You show me the insurance company that notices my excessive speeding as the safe driver and the slower merging car as the unsafe driver. I sped, to a speed that on paper is dangerous, illegal, and inappropriate. I just avoided a potential high-speed collision -- likely between the merging car and a third car behind me who couldn't see anything.
Had police unwittingly pulled me over, I'd have appeared before a judge, plead "guilty with a reason", and the judge would have agreed. Meanwhile, my insurance company would have done what, exactly? Would they have even asked me why I was speeding?
Most people with this service find themselves speeding through yellow lights because to stop for them would be a hard stop. Oh, and Progressive reserves the right to sell this data, and any government agency can get it if it needs it for legal purposes, such as finding all the drivers driving at the time of the crime and questioning them as suspects. This is NOW happening with your personal locator device... I mean cell phone. Combining this data equals total surveillance. But it might save you a few bucks to give up all hope of personal privacy. I trust you do not have curtains any your windows.You do? What do you have to hide?
Except it isn't. Now that it's mandatory, they cheerfully accept the increase in customers, keep the prices the same, and pocket the additional revenue. Free markets aren't, pal.
AC
Tech obsoletes another industry. Insurance joins buggy whip manufacturing.
Commies go home.
What if, by their judgement, I'm a bad driver, and my insurance goes up. Doesn't sounds like such a good deal then.
The insurance business is and always has been a scam; they will take you for all they can no matter how they sugar-coat it or lie about it.
1. if this becomes common place, they will OVERcharge for the 'privilege' of not having them nanny your driving to the point where only few people will be able to afford it.
2. Once it does become ubiquitous, The 'savings' will disappear, returning us to previous rates, minus the privacy.
The insurance companies, as well as the future nanny state anal kling-ons, can go fuck themselves.
Rapid acceleration wastes fuel.
Not going to lie. I drive faster than the regular driver on the road. But I do have fast reaction so I think I am "safer" than a lot of those drivers. Not only in terms of me "avoiding" accidents, but also making sure I don't induce others from causing accidents either... Whether it be making sure the guy behind me doesn't rear end me, the guy on the far lane doesn't merge-collide with me if both of us try to make a lane change, etc.. I am going to guess that with that all said and done, simply b/c I drive faster, I will get higher rates than the idiot who drives like a turtle simply b/c she can't drive faster, just "merges in" b/c she can't judge the flow of traffic, and makes a left turn as soon as the light turns yellow... just b/c well, she figures it's her right of way. Never mind the guy zooming down the straight road who doesn't have enough time to stop and can still make it before it turns red.. Until they can monitor all traffic simultaneously and do data analysis of your driving in relation to other cars beside you, these "measurements" will mean jack shit and will just be used by the insurance companies to make more money from those of us who have clean records, but may drive faster than normal - simply b/c we can.
This is a public relations piece, and it successfully co-opted Slashdot. This is neither objective, nor useful.
Do you have a link to a big insurers internal P&L statements?
Because unless you have that, like a real document, then your comment is founded on nothing
**horseshit**
You do not know what the 'total cost' is...none of us know...hell, depending on what kind of actuarial 'scientists' Progressive uses, *they* might not know exactly how much their 'total cost' is.
**WE HAVE AS MUCH PRIVACY AS WE DEMAND**
When insurance companies are going bankrupt, then we can look at it...now auto insurance is practically a sure bet...it's government subsidized, just like Obamacare.
I say damn any notion that we must trade privacy to get affordable products/services!
Thank you Dave Raggett
A cop with a speed gun, or a speed trap, or even a stoplight with a camera is **completely different** than letting a company put a GPS on your car.
You are equivocating.
Progressive will track your car's every move...that is absolutly different than anything before.
Do you think law enforcment could access Progressive's tracking data on your car w/o a warrant?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I considered it but the OBD port is right at my left foot. If I left the device on there, I'd break it off and/or wreck my port in under a week. I've been in a number of cars with ports in bad places for any kind of permanent fixture. They're meant to be used temporarily for diagnostics.
FU
I'm waiting for the "security researchers" who find out how to hook the device up to a laptop/PC/phone/whatever and manually feed in your own "safe" data. We all know it will be done.
Fuck Yes - Cyclist
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
So, 'Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing'. Maybe it can. Problem is, how we drive and how they think we drive will never mean the same.
Firstly, dangerous drivers who present the most risk are not those, who drive faster, make one or two sudden moves from time to time, or drive more than the average. Dangerous drivers are those who can't drive fast enough - ever been in a jam caused by some idots holding everyone back? -, those who can't drive safely according to environmental conditions - ever seen Californians drive in a rain? -, those who are not patient enough - remember those idiots jumping lanes like a kangoroo? -, those who aretoo inexperienced to judge any traffic situation and cause even more trouble, and so on and so forth.
Secondly, if they are not there, and can't judge the circumstances, than they are in no position to make decisions on how safely we drive. They can calculate your prices based on the speeds you drive at, the roads you drive on, the moves you make, and while they all might be safe and adhering to current traffic situations, you might still end up paying more.
This is all too short to speak about all relevant issues, but all things considered, I'll never opt for monitoring-based payments. If my fees will be higher because of this, I'll still be fine with that, since at least they won't lie to my face about how honestly and objectively and correctly they calculated those fees.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Motor insurance in the UK and US runs at a loss. They pay more claims than they take in premium. Have done for years. So, yeah, on an aggregate level they are not at all interested in reducing premiums.
[FUCK BETA]
I have a snapshot and I also got one for my mom. I have a 26% discount my moms discount is about 11% because she drives a lot more.
It doesnt beep when you "slow down quickly" it beeps when you slam on the brakes. It will not beep when stopped at a red light.
It will beep when she slams on the brakes to avoid someone cutting her off. No its not her fault but yes she was driving in a riskier area. People
who drive in heavy traffic will have more stop and start driving.
Presumably the data collected could also be used by insurance companies to find reasons not to pay in the event of an accident.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
How long before some guy borrows his buddy's device and puts it in his rental car or in his souped-up whatever mobile, and goes to town. Hard stop? How about 15 in a row! Acceleration? Gladly, here we go! Whew, 70 over the posted limit, that should do it. Now we'll just return this to his vehicle and see if he mentions it later.
The insurance industry is a slightly different business. They are not interested in reducing premiums. They may, on rare occasions, be forced to do so by undercutting. But, it's rare.
Insurance companies are more interested in maintaining or raising premiums while increasing profits. But, once a premium level is reached, and not flatly rejected by consumers, that premium level will not decrease. The preferred way to "simulate" a premium decrease is to provide a "discount" that is deducted from the unchanged premium. Those discounts are almost always temporary, or followed by a premium increase. The bottom line for the consumer remains the same or increases. Always!
I drive like a complete idiot. But I've never been in a wreck. So I sent Progressive their little thingy back after connecting it to my grandmother's car for a month.
The best way to control traffic speed seems to be feedback! A device that the posted limit is XX miles per hr and you are currently doing YY miles per hr on a large visual display is relatively cheap over time.
...this is nothing more than a leftist agenda and then trying to convince a free-thinker that it's a good thing, and the benefits thereof, and how they outweigh the fact that someone is tracking everywhere you go, everything you do, and every move you make. "Oh but it's really a good thing, because we said it's a good thing"
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Progressive is owned by a liberal, so it would be consistent that Progressive would want to monitor, and control, your every move.
None of the examples quoted add anything more than an adjustment of premium, based on Driver Behaviour. There is more to managing Motor Vehicle Insurance Risk than just how one drives. There is also driver knowledge and awareness, and condition of the vehicle. And there are more ways to incentivise good drivers other than premium. And in fact, higher premiums, from poor driving may have Zero Effect on some drivers, insofar as they are not paying the premiums directly, eg Young Adults covered by parents.
I am part of a programme that uses telematics to determine a unique Driver Quotient, that then drives a basket of benefits, the largest benefit being fuel discounted at up to 50%.
Consequently my behaviour not only determines my premiums going forward, but my fuel discount now, such that there is an immediate short-term incentive to improve my driving, and other driving-related risk factors
https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/insure-vitality-drive-overview
the benefits are multiplied for Young Adults, since that is where the real risk is, and Young Adults can earn back their parent-paid premium plus 50 % of their fuel spend, minus late-night Driving, in an attempt to push the risk curve and mortality curve down.
https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/insure-young-adult-rewards
The South African insurer DISCOVERY, better known in the Health arena, and having already use powerful science-driven incentive programmes for Health Members to manage their health
https://www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/vitality-how-it-works-overview
It works for me and a lot of other people around here.. Fuel is expensive. A 50 % potential fuel discount gets one thinking... !
Such monitoring puts us into "Lemming mode" and punishes those with better attention and faster thought processing. My observations tell me that most accidents are caused by those who are not or cannot fully focus on the task at hand. In this case it is driving. No matter what speed or braking distance is utilized, attention and analysis are the prime processes necessary for safe driving and there are those who can and those who cannot and, of course, there can be momentary lapses of one or both. A DNA test would be more appropriate.
Insurance company surveillance only adds another arc to the open circle of government control, and further deplete our liberties and rights. For instance, I am not a speeder when I am the only one or of few on the road, but during rush hours everyone has a personal agenda, maybe as simple as a full bladder or rectum, and the daytime speed limit does not apply. If I want to not be run over, I have to go with the flow. Insurance companies have imposed themselves over every area of our lives. There are insurance offers for every thing, and insurers decide your quality of life, how much of your money you get to keep, and what share they get to claim every month while writing the rules. No, enough of that already. Insurance is another form of government sanctioned thuggery and extortion. Now insurance companies want to monitor how I drive so they can regulate their portion. People should be required to keep a certain amount in an Insurance escrow account and the money belongs to group members individually. The money in escrow always belongs to the insured unless there is a claim. Large claims are paid out of the group, which the persons who were judged at fault have to repay to the group at 1.0% interest. If the insured fails to repay, they lose their driving and car ownership privileges and can pay someone to drive them around or take public transportation until they repay their damages amount. There always will be money to pay damages and good drivers are rewarded by having access to their escrow premium money in full plus 1% when they surrender their driving privileges. There always will be people maturing into the group. Insurance is about money, control, regulation, punishment and duress. People need to begin forming self-insured unions, or coops and defy insurance companies and regulators. That's all I'm saying. Unless I am provoked into saying something else.
This post fills me with Road Rage. Is that going to raise my premium?