Results 1 to 7 of 7

Thread: Seeking Cheaper Insurance, Drivers Accept Monitoring Devices ...

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    Fly-over country
    Posts
    8,189

    Default Seeking Cheaper Insurance, Drivers Accept Monitoring Devices ...

    So You’re a Good Driver? Let’s Go to the Monitor

    By RANDALL STROSS
    November 24, 2012

    LAST week, under my car’s dashboard, I installed a small wireless gadget that would monitor my driving. I wanted to see how it felt to have my driving behavior captured, sent to an insurance company and analyzed. More drivers, seeking discounts on auto insurance, are voluntarily doing just that.
    Enlarge This Image

    Insurers are offering these discounts as they aim to abandon the crude proxies they have long used to guess the likelihood that a particular policyholder will have an accident. These have included age, sex, marital status, miles driven (as reported by the driver) — and even credit scores, which can penalize those guilty of driving while poor.

    Driving data is collected with a device that policyholders must be persuaded to install; it connects to the car’s computer system via a diagnostic port found in all cars since 1996. Such “user-based insurance,” the name for individualized pricing based on data collected from a vehicle, is spreading. Drivewise from Allstate is in 10 states; Drive Safe and Save, from State Farm, is in 16, with 11 more to be added next month; and Snapshot, from Progressive, is in 43.

    Progressive was the first in the field, in 1998, when it started offering Houston customers a device that had to be professionally installed. Six years later, it introduced a device in three states that could be plugged in by the customer, but had to be unplugged at regular intervals and connected to a PC to upload the data. Wireless transmission came next.

    In 2010, Progressive introduced Snapshot, which, unlike a predecessor, is offered without a threat of penalizing incautious drivers. Participating customers who drive without alarming tendencies will receive a discount of up to 30 percent; those with poor driving habits simply do not receive the discount. The company says that more than half of Snapshot participants earn discounts, which average 10 percent annually.

    The Snapshot device records the time of day and distance traveled, along with the vehicle’s speed, second by second. But Progressive deliberately left GPS out of the device so the car’s exact location is not known; otherwise, more drivers might be nervous about using it.

    Typically, Progressive collects data for only six months (that’s the “snapshot”), after which the customer removes and returns the device. The discount can then continue indefinitely. The company reserves the right to take another snapshot later, such as after an accident.

    Richard Hutchinson, a general manager at Progressive who oversees user-based insurance, says the company understands that “acceptance of this kind of insurance increases when monitoring is not continuous.”

    Customers who sign up for Snapshot can withdraw from the program at any time. Even drivers who are not Progressive customers can install the device for a no-obligation trial. Within a month, they will receive price quotations based on the driving data collected.

    “Within 30 days, you have a strong flavor of how a customer drives,” Mr. Hutchinson says.

    Allstate, which introduced its user-based product at the end of 2008, reports more customer acceptance today than four years ago. About 30 percent of new customers are signing up for it in states offering it, says Randy Birchfield, Allstate’s vice president for product operations, who oversees Drivewise.

    THE device in my car is a Drivewise unit that Allstate supplied so that I could see how it works. (Drivewise is not currently offered in California, where I live.)

    The day after I installed it, I could log on to the Drivewise site and see graphs showing miles driven, the number of incidents of “hard braking” and “extreme braking” sensed by an accelerometer, how many miles were driven at more than 80 miles an hour, and the number of miles driven at what times of day or night. That is all. The device is semiblind by design. It does not know what road I’m traveling or whether I’m stopping for a red light. It also remains oblivious to whether I’m going 70 miles per hour in a 30 m.p.h. zone.

    Allstate says the lowest-risk time for accidents is 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekends, with the highest risk from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weekends. So I couldn’t earn the maximum discount if I worked at a job that put me on the road in the highest-risk times.

    “There is a very strong correlation between the driving behaviors we’re monitoring and accidents,” Mr. Birchfield says. Allstate says the discount for its participants also averages 10 percent.

    I had thought I’d be uncomfortable knowing that the Drivewise gadget was accompanying me everywhere, But that wasn’t the case — perhaps because my driving behavior was translated into charts with innocuous titles like “miles driven” and “braking events.” The data can be used in post-accident investigations and litigation, however, so I wonder how innocuous it would all look in court in the hands of a plaintiff who has sued me.

    “Today, the better drivers are the ones who are opting in” to user-based insurance, says Shamik Lala, a manager at A.T. Kearney, the consulting firm. In five years, when he expects the industry to view such insurance as standard, insurers will treat those who don’t opt in as bad risks, he predicts.

    In places where user-based insurance is now available, drivers are voluntarily choosing it in large numbers because, Mr. Lala says, “we all think we’re above-average drivers.”

    The little device installed under the dashboard, however, suffers not at all from excessive self-regard.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/bu...g-devices.html

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    Apparently, the U.S.S.A.
    Posts
    2,033

    Default

    Another idiot box.
    The Great Reset
    https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/

    The Fourth Industrial Revolution
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khjY...g#action=share

    The more people I meet...The better I like my dog.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Central Iowa
    Posts
    19,374

    Default

    Everyone needs to say "no" to this, no matter how much the insurance companies want it.

    Once it's in place, it'll be another of our freedoms gone.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    19,250

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Meemur View Post
    Everyone needs to say "no" to this, no matter how much the insurance companies want it.

    Once it's in place, it'll be another of our freedoms gone.
    AMEN!! And once it's mandatory, you KNOW that they'll include GPS data and other currently "optional because we think it will spook potential customers" info.

    Believe me, we'd qualify for the biggest discounts out there with our driving "patterns" (ie: rarely driving more than 3000 miles a year and that mostly on back roads where you'd have to be nuts to exceed 55 mph). But I flatly refuse to succumb to this infringement on our rapidly vanishing freedoms.

    Summerthyme

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2010
    Posts
    6,365

    Default

    Soon this will be just like trying to pay for insurance without your SSN so they can check your credit; no SSN = maximum cost. So it'll be no tracking device = maximum cost, no matter what.

    Like that article says his graph doesn't know where he is or the speed limits; for now. A quick overlay on GPS traffic software and boom; more money for them for NO reason.

    The best part is that the state government never stops forcing you to have insurance - what a beautiful system; the government makes d@mn sure the insurance companies get fed and once again separate us from our money.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
    Posts
    5,009

    Default

    I have (Endured) being tracked in Trucking for decades. First it was the old paper circle cards that you install into the company clock on the dash board of the Mack prior to your workday. These were turned in daily. Yes, they have recorded excessive speeding (But only to a max of 65) but were unable to record truly fast driving when those old macks got kicked into 3000 RPM and over 90 mph as we raced to the unloading point. (Speeding ticket 45 dollars. Load paid 65 dollars and the first 4 of 6 sent will earn an extra 4th or 5th load for the day)

    Later it became quite detailed. When matched to GPS by satellite, the company was able to determine if your ignition key was on or off, if someone was in the sleeper (Seat belt type pressure switch) and so on, so forth etc.

    Most of the time you were able to make a case and defend yourself against service failures imposed on drivers who did not deliver on time. I had a truck that showed 65 mph speed on the speedometer while failing to consistently hit the Mile Markers every 50 seconds or so. It was revealed when I use a laptop with it's own GPS and turned the truck into the shop for a defective speedometer when the speed was set at 62 instead.

    The Company Safety officer offered me a sum of money for my silence because hundreds of thousands of dollars in Insurance premiums depended on these trucks being set at 63 instead of 65.

    As far as my own driving, I refuse to accept monitoring as a condition for using my private vehicle. I understand there are hardware and software in place at the factory for this work already. Which is one reason I carefully choose older vehicles to drive.

    What most people don't understand is that the State usually offers a sort of a "Co-op" insurance through certain vendors. I was quoted 1200 dollars at 21 years old one time and got liability instead through another vendor for roughly 280 for the year.

    I see this trend of monitoring people in various ways as Chains that sit lightly upon them. It is one thing when you are dealing with shipping, trucking and railroads. But quite another when dealing with private vehicles for drivers whose records are clean. If you have a record that indicates you are a bad driver then you will either pay more or not get a policy at all.

    *Disclaimer My own vehicle was recently totaled by a older gentleman who had good insurance. I would imagine after the Settlement was paid, he will be paying much more for the rest of his driving now.

  7. #7
    breezy's Avatar
    breezy is offline Tree of Liberty Benefactor
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Behind enemy lines
    Posts
    40,623

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Meemur View Post
    Everyone needs to say "no" to this, no matter how much the insurance companies want it.

    Once it's in place, it'll be another of our freedoms gone.

    This!!!!

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •