Florida Man Sues G.M. and LexisNexis Over Sale of His Cadillac Data (nytimes.com) 125
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Romeo Chicco tried to get auto insurance in December, seven different companies rejected him. When he eventually obtained insurance, it was nearly double the rate he was previously paying. According to a federal complaint filed this week seeking class-action status, it was because his 2021 Cadillac XT6 had been spying on him. Modern cars have been called "smartphones with wheels," because they are connected to the internet and packed with sensors and cameras. According to the complaint, an agent at Liberty Mutual told Mr. Chicco that he had been rejected because of information in his "LexisNexis report." LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker, has traditionally kept tabs for insurers on drivers' moving violations, prior insurance coverage and accidents.
When Mr. Chicco requested his LexisNexis file, it contained details about 258 trips he had taken in his Cadillac over the past six months. His file included the distance he had driven, when the trips started and ended, and an accounting of any speeding and hard braking or accelerating. The data had been provided by General Motors -- the manufacturer of his Cadillac. In a complaint against General Motors and LexisNexis Risk Solutions filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Chicco accused the companies of violation of privacy and consumer protection laws. The lawsuit follows a report by The New York Times that, unknown to consumers, automakers have been sharing information on their driving behavior with the insurance industry, resulting in increased insurance rates for some drivers.
When Mr. Chicco requested his LexisNexis file, it contained details about 258 trips he had taken in his Cadillac over the past six months. His file included the distance he had driven, when the trips started and ended, and an accounting of any speeding and hard braking or accelerating. The data had been provided by General Motors -- the manufacturer of his Cadillac. In a complaint against General Motors and LexisNexis Risk Solutions filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Chicco accused the companies of violation of privacy and consumer protection laws. The lawsuit follows a report by The New York Times that, unknown to consumers, automakers have been sharing information on their driving behavior with the insurance industry, resulting in increased insurance rates for some drivers.
Needs to be shut down with prejudice (Score:3, Insightful)
Two words: (Score:2)
Class. Action.
Here's where you get your report (Score:2)
Here's where you get you report from LexisNexis is you're interested.
https://consumer.risk.lexisnex... [lexisnexis.com]
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It's a huge privacy problem, absolutely.
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zero context information.
This is one of the problems with insurance companies. I have a tracking system on my car for cheap insurance (I don't live in the USA so it's not like those stories where you have to drive as gently as grandma after smoking 6 joints or get dinged on braking). I did have an incident recently where I did have to brake hard when some kid shot out blindly from an obscured bush and onto the road.
I had a quite fun conversation with the insurance company afterwards when they raised my rates by $20/month. They even
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The absurd belief that the phantasmagorical 'free market' will result in only benefits for consumers is widespread here in the US. I have ceased to be amazed by the reactions to the bi-annual "revelations" that this or that intel or law agency has been simply buying the data that they're not allowed to collect on their own without warrants. I remember first reading about it around 2003 and not being surprised then, but every two years like clockwork there's another "expose" about companies selling consume
Re: Needs to be shut down with prejudice (Score:2)
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Huh? Do you read more Russian and Chinese media than Western sources? The vast majority of the propaganda that I've been exposed to comes from the US and western Europe.
Re: Needs to be shut down with prejudice (Score:2)
Its in the fine print you don't see when you buy the car.
The more ridiculous thing is of course that you press on the brakes equals hard braking. Its winter and your abs kicks in and guess what that counts as...
Anyway in a few years they'll revert to normal rates and info gets thrown out, currently its only seen as valuable as they have it of so few drivers and the company selling the data basically just flat out lies about the quality of the data - the "normal" driving benchmark on it isn't normal at all -
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Violation of Florida Law. Law overrides contract language.
GDPR? (Score:3)
Compare prices, (Score:3)
I wonder if something like this would fly here in EU?
You also mean has fkown. Past tense. We should find out how long the abuse has been going on. GDPR isn’t that old.
But I’d say the ultimate test is to ask those in the EU what they pay for car insurance for a similar or same car. The abuse should be identifiable in price.
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From what I know about that piece of legislation, this would probably turn out to be very expensive for those passing the data on. Then again, some regions / countries are very lax when it comes to prosecuting - Bayern for instance.
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to ask those in the EU what they pay for car insurance for a similar or same car.
Many people insure a new car and then keep the policy at the same level as the car ages and dramatically declines in value, while the insurance company happily charges them high premiums to over-insure their vehicle.
Other people shop around every year before renewing.
So, it's common for people with the same car and similar driving records to pay very different rates.
Insurance is more for just your car (Score:2)
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It insures you against property and personal damage to others which to me is the more important coverage in a litigious society like ours.
Yes, but the vast majority of the money paid out by car insurance companies is for damage to cars.
And, in response ot the GP post, the cost of repairing a car does not go down with age, although the amount the insurance will pay for a tortal write-off will.
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Soon baby.
The EU resists Big Data a bit for the show - and possibly because, unlike the US powers that be, they might actually care about their constituents - then they too roll over. There's just too much money sloshing around and too many powerful interest groups.
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The legislation only applies in the EU.
Re: GDPR? (Score:2)
It does and you wonâ(TM)t hear about it because GDPR has nothing to do with data collections being allowed or disclosure about them being required. It regulates and legalizes data collection practices, setting ever expanding parameters on the things companies are allowed to do without recourse from the citizenry.
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False. The GDPR limits the extent in which data can be passed on to third parties without express permission. Car companies collect this data, but they aren't allowed to blindly pass it on to whomever shows up with a credit card, unlike in the USA.
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I wonder if something like this would fly here in EU?
Not fully. The sale of this data is restricted in Europe, but the collection isn't. Your data is absolutely being collected. In some cases this is even a feature e.g. Volvo has an app with which you can lookup this data, which sounds bad, unless you are the type of person who has to fill out a logbook.
Hard braking or accelerating (Score:2)
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Their definition of hard: the amount of excitement the C-Suite at insurance companies feel raping consumers.
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The word "legal" implies there's some kind of regulation going on. There isn't any.
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Further, do they have some evidence, a lot of it, that shows that people with a certain acceleration/braking profile cause more use of insurance?
This seems like an excuse to charge more but without evidence that the increase is justified. Was the insurance company losing money before this new form of spying?
They don't need to be losing money (Score:2)
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Hard braking? Like, say, when you're trying to avoid running a red light?
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Hard braking? Like, say, when you're trying to avoid running a red light?
Or a dog runs into the street in front of you. Or, as happened to me this morning, making a left turn at your green light and the person from your right believes their red light is optional as they make a left turn in front of you. Or, as happened to me today by coincidence, the traffic in front of you suddenly brakes on the highway and even though you're keeping a safe driving distance, you need to apply the brakes to avoid plowing into the person in front of you.
There are a multitude of legitimate reason
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I wonder if there is a legal definition of hard. Is it some number of gs? Is it whatever the automaker decides?
Legal definition? Probably not.
Insurance company's definition? Most likely the braking you have to do when you catch one of those short yellow lights, and the acceleration you have to do when dealing with one of those poorly designed left exits on the highway.
Re: Hard braking or accelerating (Score:2)
You firmly press on the pedal.
Thats it. Its not even a joke.
Florida Man! (Score:5, Funny)
Doing something useful for once.
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Florida Man is usually up to some shady shit, so of course he doesn't want his car tracking him.
I'm conflicted (Score:4, Insightful)
This actually seems like reasonable information for an insurance company to want. And safer drivers make it safe for others. But mining personal data is, in general, a social disaster. And the insurance company shouldn't have access to the PLACES he visited.
My first thought is that they car companies should be required to do full public disclosure in an intelligible to an average high schooler and octogenarian manner of any information they are collecting, and explicitly state how that information will be used. And be legally bound by that with severe penalties, including, but not limited to, payment to the owner of the car of triple any expenses incurred as a result of their using the information in a non-disclosed manner. (So here it would be paying him triple the increase in his insurance rate. Plus any lawyers feeds, and triple minimum wage for any time he had to spend as a result of their actions.)
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Actually theft and accident rates vary by location, so insurance companies have a financial incentive to know this.
Of course, where you go is a bigger privacy concern than how you drive. I wonder when they'll start tracking whether girlfriends/children are in the car with you, I bet that impacts accident rates and claims amounts.
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This actually seems like reasonable information for an insurance company to want. And safer drivers make it safe for others. But mining personal data is, in general, a social disaster. And the insurance company shouldn't have access to the PLACES he visited.
My first thought is that they car companies should be required to do full public disclosure in an intelligible to an average high schooler and octogenarian manner of any information they are collecting, and explicitly state how that information will be used. And be legally bound by that with severe penalties, including, but not limited to, payment to the owner of the car of triple any expenses incurred as a result of their using the information in a non-disclosed manner. (So here it would be paying him triple the increase in his insurance rate. Plus any lawyers feeds, and triple minimum wage for any time he had to spend as a result of their actions.)
What was in his driving that insurers all rejected him?
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Have you ever seen how entitled old dudes in cadillacs drive?
Insider Info on the technology/location/insurance (Score:5, Informative)
They have the capability to track your location. They're very interested in theft. In fairness, they have good intentions. Your vehicle is much more likely to get stolen if you work in Detroit than if you live and work in Grosse Point (a wealthy suburb nearby). They wanted to offer discounts to people working in low-crime areas to compete with their rivals.
In general, I believe them that they were acting in good faith about 15 years ago when I was working on this. They were keeping their rates as-is, but wanted to offer discounts to drivers who put a device in their car to confirm they're safe drivers who are at low-risk of theft. Insurance is fairly competitive in the USA and there are a bunch of major players, so this major player wanted to offer some discounts. There's an obvious downside...in that you're penalizing the poor for being victims at no fault of their own...but insurance is a heartless sociopathic business...and frankly, that's quite minor compared to the abuses in US Health Insurance. So...to all you bleeding hearts....here's a pre-emptive fuck off and grow up...people have businesses to run. Your choices are pay more for your social virtues...or make those who cost more pay more...and this is a reasonable compromise between the two extremes
The official answer on location was they declined to collect the information because it didn't provide enough value upon further research, so they were going to not send the data for cost efficiency. The rumor was they wanted it, but executives realized that if the data was mined, it would likely be sold to marketing firms and easily accessible to divorce attorneys.
No matter how much you anonymize car data, you can easily figure out who is who. Even if you remove the top 2 locations they park at (work and home)....even if you remove all residential stops...you're still logging transit data, so you know they're driving on the roads to go home, you just have gaps in where they stop. You notice they stop at gas stations near their house and relative's houses often. All you need is their Target history and you can easily correlate the 2 and confirm a match.
To be honest, I am surprised some sketchy business in the UAE, Russia, or Iran doesn't already offer this stalking information. Remember the Grindr Priest [slashdot.org]. I'm surprised someone isn't monetizing this now. Even if it's not that accurate, people will still pay for it. So much data is available for purchase to marketers, why isn't someone buying/stealing this and selling it to jealous girlfriends or vindictive bosses?
That said, this is a really offensive breach of customer data. I am already paying GM a rather hefty price for a vehicle. It should be illegal for them to further monetize it by selling my data without my full consent. Any hiding it in terms and services is bullshit. They should have to ask for my consent every time they sell it and pay me a portion of the revenue....and if they fail to do so, I should be able to sue them for all the revenue lost. I know it's not a lot of cash, but a great way to curtail abuse is to make them accountable for the revenue. If you see a $0.20 check coming in each month, it'll make it crystal-clear GM is abusing your data. If you're fine with it, enjoy the pocket change. If you're not, then it will make their competitors much more appealing.
As an American, why does GM have to make themselves a perpetual embarrassment? I want to support American companies, but the more I learn about GM, the more I want to go back to Toyota when my current car dies.
Re: Insider Info on the technology/location/insura (Score:2)
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They have the capability to track your location. They're very interested in theft. In fairness, they have good intentions. Your vehicle is much more likely to get stolen if you work in Detroit than if you live and work in Grosse Point (a wealthy suburb nearby). They wanted to offer discounts to people working in low-crime areas to compete with their rivals.
This should, of course, be illegal. There should be one national market for insurance, and it should be unlawful to charge people more money because of where they live. It tends to be a proxy for, among other things, either racial discrimination or age discrimination, depending on which region you're talking about.
There's an obvious downside...in that you're penalizing the poor for being victims at no fault of their own
That, too.
and frankly, that's quite minor compared to the abuses in US Health Insurance.
Which should *also* be a nationwide market for the same reason, and insurance companies shouldn't even be able to ask where you live or work except to the extent necessary to send you
In fairness, they have the data (Score:2)
Insurance companies should not be able to use deceleration data, because that's not a reliable indicator of how likely someone is to have a wreck. More rapid decelerations could indicate that they're reacting too slowly (more at-fault wrecks) or it could indicate that they're reacting more aggressively than needed (likely fewer at-fault wrecks), and there's no way to know which of these is the case without combining it with camera data and careful analysis of the video footage leading up to the event. And even then, I'm not entirely convinced I would trust them to get that analysis right. After all, if it were easy, we'd all have self-driving cars by now.
So...they're actually interested in getting the data right and they have statistics for this. What you're saying makes perfect sense and I agree with it in theory, but if the analysis indicates that people who decelerate get in more accidents then denying a discount of their advertised rates is not unreasonable. Also, consider that the more aggressive person may be more cautious, but they're also being exposed to more situations in which they nearly had an accident. In theory, people don't slam on their
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Too much granularity in insurance data defeats the purpose of insurance pools: That is to spread the risk among a group such that a harm to one is borne by the whole without hardship.
Actuarial tables already provide risk analysis for groups, individualizing beyond that is counterproductive.
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In general, I believe them that they were acting in good faith about 15 years ago when I was working on this. They were keeping their rates as-is, but wanted to offer discounts to drivers
Erm... I hate to be the one to break this to you but that is corporate double-speak for "we want to find out how to charge people more and justify it". The rates for people in nice areas might only go up a little, but in less salubrious neighbourhoods the data will be used to justify a price increase.
Insurance companies are notorious for it here in the UK... If I put my first name as Mohammed rather than Michael, my insurance sky rockets. Doesn't matter where I live. If Mohammed changes his first name to
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To be honest, I am surprised some sketchy business in the UAE, Russia, or Iran doesn't already offer this stalking information.
Try running for public office in America and see how far you get. This information is definitely kept and used.
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"Information" is the key word here. It appears to mostly be garbage or worse misleading. I have one of those trackers in my car. Luckliy, the insurance company is too cheap to put a SIM in it and wants to use my cellphone and app. So it tracks your trips and sends you alerts and advice. The number of things it gets wrong is astounding!
Heavy acceleration detected, off a speed bump jumping to 30 in a 25mph zone. Or on a short on ramp to a highway. Heavy breaking, when you come to a slightly faster halt
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The number of things it gets wrong is astounding!
Heavy acceleration detected, off a speed bump jumping to 30 in a 25mph zone. Or on a short on ramp to a highway. Heavy breaking, when you come to a slightly faster halt due to a light changing to yellow.
The evil voice in my head says, "Just run the light like everybody else does. That will make driving safer for sure." :-D
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Personally I feel it's reasonable for insurance companies to raise rates for people intentionally engaging in risky behavior. They should also help those people identify that behavior, and lower rates if they correct it. Everyone wins.
On the other hand it should be illegal to raise rates based on factors the insured can't control, for example for medical insurance based on medical history, medical problems that run in the family, etc. The point of insurance is to spread the cost of such things across a lot
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Everything I've read about this issue states that location data was NOT included in the LexisNexis report sent to the driver that requested a copy of their data, although that report was generated for a GM vehicle that wasn't mentioned in this particula
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This actually seems like reasonable information for an insurance company to want.
Yes. Wanting more data about the risk factors of customers makes sense for them. But do we want them to have it?
We must, because we have not outlawed collecting and selling it. This is legal in the USA. Information is the legal property of whomever collects it (with very few exceptions).
The only way to fix it is to make collecting unnecessary data illegal-at least for businesses. But (unless carefully crafted) that potentially becomes a conflict with our personal rights (how can I not have the right to
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This actually seems like reasonable information for an insurance company to want.
So you are okay with the ultimate in privacy violations all so an insurance company can set a payment rate? I guess the ends really do justify the means. And I have to live under the same government where you vote. Fuck me and fuck you.
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You make a legal requirement that he have insurance, and then give the insurance company complete access to his data, so it can charge him more.
I have a question for you: If the man had left his car in the garage and done nothing with it, or driven in perfect accordance with all laws, would the insurance company issue him a refund since they hadn't actually been exposed to the risk they charged him for?
This seems insane. Can you just send me your bank info, and I'll take whatever money out of it whenever I want, based on your reckless habit of going to the bar once a week?
My insurances rates have also gone up and I barely drive.
People drive recklessly and I'm supposed to foot the bill for their recklessness when they cause an accident?
So someone who drives once in a while pays the same insurance as a guy going 100mph and weaving through traffic? That makes no sense.
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If he leaves it in the garage he should get his insurance adjusted for like 500 miles per year. (I assume it comes out _sometimes_ or he wouldn't need to register or insure it at all...)
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And if he then drives 50K miles the next year, should he backpay the insurance company more money for that year?
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If he plans to drive a lot he should give them advance notice; insurance fraud is punished pretty harshly. But assuming nothing happens it's pretty typical to just update it again at renewal.
Re: I'm conflicted (Score:2)
The definition for driving like a lunatic might surprise you.
99% of people its not worth getting an insurance company tracker. If you have bumpy roads even less worth it, but more worth it than a different company selling the data since the data becomes more valuable the more lunatic its represented as, so if you live in a town with traffic lights you'll be doing lots of "hard braking" or running the lights.
Eventually the insurance companies will stop paying attention and paying for the data as they get act
Future of google maps (Score:2)
As google is hurting for cash, this is (one of) the future of google maps. It stores all that information (why is it uploading so much data to Google when you're on maps?) and will sell it if it hurting for cash.
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I have a love/hate relationship with Google Maps. I know that every time I use Google, they're adding it to a profile of me. Like Facebook, it will draw from every possible source that Google has access to. Google likely already knows more about me than I do. They also know my social relationships based on others in my family using their phones to search things - don't forget, even if location services are off, they still log and then upload those logs the next time you authorize location services.
I wou
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Exactly. The car companies aren't "sharing" it, they're selling it.
GM sends more than just trip data (Score:4, Informative)
The GM cars take more than trip data. It uploads data from every sensor it has. From when you opened/closed your doors, to your occupancy, to your temperature settings. Everything the car can record, it will record and send it.
The crazy thing is that they make you pay for the equipment to enable them to spy on you.
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>The GM cars take more than trip data.
When I got my Chevy, literally the first thing I did once I had it in my driveway was to rip out the external communications computer and confirm that doing so didn't stop any other functions I cared about from working. Now if I could just get the 'smart' dash system to respect my will about the dash brightness...
Usually when I buy a car, my first move is to remove the stupid dealer license plate bracket, but just on basic principles I'm not going to have my car sp
Re:GM sends more than just trip data (Score:4, Informative)
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If you're buying new... tell the salesman you want to see the car function with the DCM disabled before you sign. If you're buying used, it should be easy enough to test.
This assumes that the answer can't be had with some Internet searching.
Then comes the difficult part - if you're really dedicated to your privacy and principles... you have to walk away from any car that spies on you and can't be stopped from doing so.
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I got curious and googled it. I've seen a claim that you can short a couple of pins to bypass this... if you're set on a Toyota, it's worth the research.
Competition (Score:2)
It's a good thing no other car company is doing this, right? Right?
funny how only one demographic is complaining (Score:3)
I don't see a single post here talking about how their good driving habits are saving them money on lower insurance rates... If one group is being charged more, there MUST be another group getting charged less. This discussion is definitely not unbiased.
That being said, I still don't like the idea of a product that I (or my bank I suppose) 100% own collecting data on me and selling it, regardless of whether that works for or against me in the end. Now when I'm using Google to search for something, I'm fully aware that they're providing me with a service at no cost, in exchange for collecting and selling statiscis about my activities. But this is different - I doubt it's in the fine print on the purchasing agreement and I'd wager most owners would say they're not expecting this to be happening. It really feels illegal to me, violating my privacy without notice or compensation.
But I'm sure they just look at this as another source of revenue, and will continue to do it for as long as they can, as any big business will do.
Re:funny how only one demographic is complaining (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see a single post here talking about how their good driving habits are saving them money on lower insurance rates... If one group is being charged more, there MUST be another group getting charged less. This discussion is definitely not unbiased.
Insurance rates have increased across the board by 25-40% since 2020, depending on who's numbers you believe. *NOBODY* is getting *lower* insurance rates, which is why nobody is talking about that.
But let's go your way for a second and assume that insurance companies *did* lower rates based on good driving habits. Such a program would be more of an opt-in thing, like Progressive's Snapshot. Now, what's interesting about this case study is how the article seems to be optimistic, but it's easy to pivot them differently. 57% of shoppers (i.e. non-Progressive customers) knew about Snapshot, but 89% of *customers* (i.e. people who signed up to be insured by the carrier) 'nope' out of it...so when telemetry is explicitly opt-in, most people don't.
Of those who *did* sign up, they only listed their overall satisfaction at 7.1/10, meaning that there were *very* few people who rated at 9 or 10 ('7' tends to be the default in such surveys). The two most common complaints were that the savings received from having all their driving monitored didn't meet expectations, and that the snapshot system gave demerits for 'hard braking' at levels that weren't contextually relevant. A distracted driver hard-braking to avoid a rear-end collision that would have been a direct consequence of their distraction is vastly different than a driver avoiding a side swipe from another driver merging carelessly. While any onlooker would see a chasm of difference between the two, telemetry doesn't differentiate, and the alert, defensive driver would get penalized as much as the distracted driver. Worse yet, the careless merger wouldn't get a demerit at all despite nearly causing an accident. All this for a best-case-scenario of $231 in savings per year, i.e. less than how much my insurance went up last year anyway, and I didn't have an accident or a ticket.
So, in practice, people don't opt in when it's made abundantly clear that they're being tracked. Florida Man's case revolves around the fact that the telemetry being used against him was not collected with his truly-informed-consent. I do sincerely hope that he wins, because the problem here isn't that telemetry is possible (to your point, I'm perfectly fine with people opting into Snapshot or something like it if they so choose), it's that it's basically impossible to know who's collecting what, and how it's being interpreted. I'd love nothing more than for the case to go to SCOTUS and determine that auto makers *must* provide a way to expressly disable all telemetry from vehicles *and* that insurance companies cannot use the absence of telemetry as an actuarial metric...but it'll take a Florida Man to make the case get that far.
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I thought I linked my source...Citation for the Snapshot study: https://canada.jdpower.com/sys... [jdpower.com]
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On top of that, they were going to use my phone data plan to send this information to their computers to snoop on me. I did a hard pass. Not enough
See my post below. (Score:2)
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Insurance rates have increased across the board by 25-40% since 2020, depending on who's numbers you believe.
Yes, but average car costs and more importantly average repair is significantly up. Fender bender used to be a bumper respray, now it is LIDAR module, parking sensor plus work to install it. On top of all of that, it is much easier to steal the new car as wireless keys are categorically more vulnerable that a typical old school mechanical key.
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Insurance rates have increased across the board by 25-40% since 2020, depending on who's numbers you believe. *NOBODY* is getting *lower* insurance rates, which is why nobody is talking about that.
Insurance rates have increased due to the cost of insurance increasing. Increase in car thefts, increase in cost of repairs. I remember getting a windscreen replaced 10 years ago, $75, insurance paid all of it. Now I have just had one replaced last year, $900, oh and the car had to go back to the manufacturer to recalibrate sensors.
meaning that there were *very* few people who rated at 9 or 10
This is an insurance company. I don't know anyone who has rated any insurance company a 9 or 10. They are among the most hated industries on the planet, right up there with ISPs.
Pennies and steamrollers (Score:3)
Ignoring legality, GM needs to immediately identify the people who greenlit this and very publicly make someone resign.
They won't of course, because suits conspire against their own company half the time ... but no fucking way this makes any long term business sense, this is brand suicide.
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Something like this doesn't happen without EVERYONE at the top being involved.
You'd actually have fewer people involved in middle management because only one team would really be required and maybe 2-3 managers related to the organizational groups that team was built from. And of course a few of their peers would be aware from peripheral discussions at otherwise unrelated meetings. But at the top you'd have everyone in the know, and they'd be involving operations, IT, sales, marketing, finance, R&D, le
Re: Pennies and steamrollers (Score:2)
It's only brand suicide if only a few companies sharing data. Since the data is actually being used by insurers I have to assume it's widespread across the industry. Each car company just hoping they aren't the first to get found out, but I'm sure they quickly point out out how common it is to save face.
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Ignoring legality, GM needs to immediately identify the people who greenlit this and very publicly make someone resign.
Why? This is the USA. Firstly collecting such data is legal (you read your Terms of Services right? I know Florida Man didn't). Secondly selling such data is legal. Why would GM make someone who found a new profit centre for the company resign?
This is just like those people who criticise oil companies for drilling for oil. That product is legal, the government grants permission. Being angry at someone for doing something which is allowed to make money is silly. You need to address the problem at the fundame
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The data collection program for vehicles is authorized by the same group that authorized the data collection from your computer. Microsoft will never be prohibited from it and neither will the car companies. God I can't wait for the ChristoFascists to get control. This is going to the ultimate in hilarity. Everyone alive will get examined by a morality AI. I am glad I am dying soonish. We are heading towards a very unique version of hell on Earth.
Google has the same info as well (Score:2)
This was in the Corvette forums a few days ago (Score:2)
Safety issue - Ottawa transit bus crash (Score:5, Interesting)
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This should be banned for safety reasons.
The cost of having an accident is worse for your insurance premium than the cost of hard braking. This kind of thought process simply doesn't factor into an emergency.
Basically if you think someone is going to hit you because they are thinking about their insurance premiums during an emergency then they are going to hit you one way or another because they simply do not know how to act in an emergency. (It's like those people who insist they need a powerful car because they can accelerate to avoid an acciden
Re: (Score:2)
This should be banned for safety reasons. I do not want drivers becoming hesitant about hard breaking in an emergency because they think their insurance rates will go up.
It doesn't matter what you want. Statistically speaking, it is better for people to be hesitant about hard braking because hard braking almost always precedes an accident. Fewer hard braking events equals fewer accidents statistically speaking...
Does anyone have anywhere handy to go throw up? I am feeling it very strongly right about now.
Romeo Chicco? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Opt out (Score:2)
On a related issue, in home robots (Score:2)
We should decide now if it will be legal for your personal robot to testify against you.
Also, will the government be allowed a backdoor into your personal robot to spy on you?
Needs some laws on the books for that.
@Scott Adams
https://twitter.com/ScottAdams... [twitter.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you were a constantly unpredictable element on the road, forcing everyone around you to adjust whenever you showed up. Got it.
Re: Measuring the Wrong Stuff (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"But officer, I know I broke the law, but so did everyone else and that makes it okay!"
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I did much the same. Keeping my eyes on a swivel for cops kept me even more alert.
In all those years of the 55 mph limit, I was only pulled over on the freeway twice. One time the Highway Patrol officer just asked me to drive
Re: (Score:3)
A "hero" wouldn't drive a car after having eye surgery, duh
Re: Measuring the Wrong Stuff (Score:2)
how often and how long a driver is looking inside the car rather than at the road ahead.
Not everybody's psychological attention and comprehrnsion structure is the same.
And peripheral vision is faster and more ligjt sensitive (although lower resolution), some of us can leverage even that.
Re: Measuring the Wrong Stuff (Score:2)
When the drivers side front wheel literally fell off my van at 70 mph (due to improper torque specing by the tire shop), I was glad I was going a sane speed, as I was able to bring the vehicle safely to a halt without striking my fellow drivers or injuring/killing myself.
Then, of course, there's the danger that speeding presents to those stuck on the side of the road, as well. As I lay under the vehicle, slamming studs back into
Re: (Score:2)
What you describe is negligent driving, not speeding.
Re: Measuring the Wrong Stuff (Score:2)
Speeding causes issues when other people are expecting you to be going within 15MPH or so of the limit and therefore cannot judge properly the amount of time they have to safely change lanes or pull out in front of you. It causes problems when a third party knocks someone else into your path and the damage and/or injuries are significantly worse than if you had not been speeding. It is a problem when someone else runs into you and you collect up a couple extra cars because of your momentum. And this being s