Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored?
Is Your Driving Being Secretly Scored?
The insurance industry, hungry for insights into how people drive, has turned to automakers and smartphone apps like Life360.
Yes, they count the amount of car accidents and base their insurance off of it.
It is no secret though.
I'd be fine with that. But wanting me to install an app now on my phone to get the discounts I always got for being a safe driver pisses me the fuck off.
Nope. My car doesn't have internet and I don't plug in any dongles from my insurance. Screw 'em.
Do you have a smartphone though?
Yes. I don't install their app, and if I did, I would prevent it from accessing any sensor data (GrapheneOS makes that an option).
I have a pay-as-you-go insurance in Canada, and they explicitly say that they "... will not use the data to cancel or refuse an automobile insurance policy; to apply surcharges to your current or future automobile policy or for marketing purposes.".
Apparently, they only use it to confirm the mileage. It does capture your GPS tracking, and will alert you of any issues, like a low car battery (which I've had a few times because I drive so little!).
Honestly, in this case, I don't care. I drive too infrequently, and this saves our family thousands a year, so it's a net benefit for me, and I choose to opt-in.
Yes
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After The New York Times revealed that General Motors was sharing driving behavior with LexisNexis, customers filed dozens of lawsuits and the carmaker ended its contract with the data broker.
The scores “look at drivers’ performance behind the wheel, including how often they brake suddenly, speed or use their phones,” according to an Arity blog post aimed at insurance marketers, and can be used to target potential customers based on “10 different risk categories.”
Last month, Kathleen Lomax, a New Jersey mother who paid $100 annually for Life360 to track her husband and twin 18-year-old daughters, reached out to the company to ask if it was selling their driving data.
A number of factors go into determining it, including credit history, gender, marital status, age, what car you drive and where you live, said Dale Porfilio of the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group.
Driving has gotten more dangerous, but the police are giving out fewer tickets, a decline that some attribute to a law enforcement pullback after the pandemic and widespread protests over George Floyd’s death four years ago.
“Auto insurance companies use a lot of socioeconomic factors, like your credit score or your job or your education level, like whether you went to high school or to college or whether you’re married.”
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Stuff like this would actually be good if it was used to keep lunatics off the road. There are too many people that drive like maniacs or just straight up assholes and get away with it because there are just so many cops and even then, half don't want the paperwork.
It's a shame it always has to boil down to companies trying to leverage it to make money.