Has anyone else seen one of these things in practice? They are completely asinine. My dad's girlfriend had one in her car and it definitely didn't save her any money. They track behavior without context and you have to go 6 months without any "unacceptable" braking or acceleration to get the discount. The Progressive ones at least. Some asshole cuts you off and you break too hard? Start over. Your normal route to work is down a bunch of switchbacks that require constant breaking? You'll break too hard one day and have to start over. Accelerate like a normal driver onto the freeway? Probably have to start over. Drive a reasonable speed on the highway (70ish)? That's too fast, you'll have to start over. All for a measly 10% off. Fuck the man watching me. I refuse to drive like a bitch just to save a little money.
Yeah, these things are bullshit. I mean, we live in a pretty impressive age, and technology is capable of a lot of things, but does anyone really think we're all going to have some kind of fuckin' robot spy in our cars by the end of the decade? Fuck me, do you have any idea how much that would cost to install, let alone monitor and assess? It's a good idea in theory, but in practice? Driving is far, far, far too contextual and situational to be monitored by a computer.
It can't be THAT expensive if Progressive thinks it's financially smart to do this. If the government decides to make it mandatory it will be implicit in the cost of the vehicle, you'll barely notice the price increase. Just like with making it mandatory for all phones to have GPS. Even if the government decides to pay for it, they'll get their money back ten fold by issuing tickets, see: traffic light monitors.
I really don't think it is that far off before there are tracking devices capable of being installed on all vehicles on the road. These devices could moniter position, time, g-force, accelerator position and tire speed. Assuming they are set-up to upload data in realtime, if someone gets in an accident and law enforcement feels they need more context than what that individual vehicle's "black box" is providing, they can subpeona the data pull from all the other vehicles within an arbitrary distance during the timeframe of the event. For people that aren't being complete jackasses on the road -it would exonerate them of wrongdoing if someone cut them off, they slipped on ice, or any number of faultless accidents. If I was in the business of offering insurance, and was willing to offer a discount to good drivers - you can be damn sure I would be as strict as possible with the requirements and the payoff would be carefully calculated. You don't want to work for the discount? Then you don't get it. Capitalism at it's finest.
Stalin would shake your hand for that. [/trolling] Being a shitty driver, I don't see myself ever voluntarily opting in to something like this. And if my shitty insurance ever decides to implement something like this, I'll switch to a company that doesn't. Simple as that.
You nutjobs need to take your tinfoil hats off. The way this works is pretty damn simple. I'd like to draw special attention to this: Yeah, I have one of these in my car. Why the hell not? It's just measuring how I drive, it's not sending data to the mother ship about how many times I masturbated last week. If snapshot doesn't like how I drive, I don't really care because my rate stays the same. For fuck's sake, it's a VOLUNTARY program. If they start making this mandatory and automatically fining people that's one thing, but we're no where near that point. Having tracking chips put into my driver's license pisses me off. Snapshot has no reason to be a target for outrage.
Interesting. I'd like to draw your attention to this: "Don't worry, seatbelt offenses are secondary, they won't be used as a basis for a stop." "Don't worry, talking on a phone offenses are secondary, they won't be used as the basis for a stop." "Don't worry, the health questionnaire is for informational purposes, it won't be used as a basis to deny health insurance." "Don't worry, non-smoking sections are voluntary, they won't be required and it won't be banned on your private property." "Don't worry, these monitoring devices attached to all the private e-mail servers won't be used against you." I could go on and on. I hear what you're saying, Kampf, but the fact is everytime a government agency tells people that a small infringement now won't lead to a greater infringement later, well, you know what they say about vampires, don't you? And yes, private insurance companies are private. Other than the fact that they're heavily regulated, routinely turn information over to the government, and the government requires you to pay them or face incarceration. So I'm sure that will make all the difference.
Aside from it being an invasion on my privacy I believe your insurance can actually go up from one of these if they think you're a reckless driver. More than a few times people that ride with me say I drive like a maniac so I'd never get one. That's not to say I'm a bad driver as far as being able to control my vehicle but I am the guy who constantly speeds, will tailgate you in the passing lane, brakes way late, rarely uses blinkers and I'm just generally hard on my vehicles.
Can you say "big brother is watching you." It's getting harder and harder to say that this country (America) is the land of the free. Stop watching me, dictating my life and telling me how to live. Yes I know it's an Insurance company but I can easily see this being a government item. Focus: Yeah it's cool to think that being a good drive will result in savings but I also don't want to be punished because of how I drive either. Soon it's going to be Sunday for drivers everyday.
I stand corrected. I was under the impression that these things would have to be pretty sophisticated, but after reading the bullet point list of what they do, it's surprisingly low tech. That being said, I still stand by my statement concerning usage for insurance purposes. Parents monitoring their kids? No problem. Insurance companies monitoring drivers? Entirely different ballgame. Maybe it'll play out differently, but I can't see these catching on.
My thoughts exactly. I'm not down with the whole all up in my business thing. And slow drivers piss me off enough...I don't need people going even slower in the name of saving money. I drive fast, but it's controlled, I don't need the insurance company penalizing me for that.
I say test them in cop cars first, correlated with their emergency response lights. Make the data public. Have them lead by example, and hold them responsible. Otherwise, fuck that.
Hell, I'd be happy if you could track the use of their emergency lights against actual dispatch calls. The idea of this is terrible. All it's going to do is reward bad drivers who drive too slowly. And in a lot of cases, driving too slow is dangerous. Going 100 km/h in the left hand lane on the highway? You're holding up traffic for kilometres behind you, but the insurance company thinks you're doing a great job. Piddling along an 80 km/h zone at 75 km/h and there's only one lane? You're causing road rage. Towing a trailer somewhere and can't keep up with the speed of traffic and you don't pull over to let people pass? Not only are you inconsiderate, you're at risk of getting rear-ended. Decide that you need a massive gap in traffic to make a left hand turn? Again, holding up traffic behind you. In all of these cases, the insurance company will see that you're driving very cautiously, conservatively, and supposedly safely. But you're really not. You're either increasing the risk to yourself, or creating bad driving conditions for somebody else, or you're an incompetent moron and your next accident is waiting to happen because you can't handle yourself in traffic. And then there's the whole issue of privacy and technology creep.
I wouldn't be surprised if they already had something like that. Texas State Troopers are always being recorded (audio), and have been since at least '06. If you look closely, they have a little microphone on their shirts in the chest area. I've noticed that this cuts down on the bad attitudes and unprofessional behavior. When I started driving in the late '90s, some of them would get pretty uppity. These days they are the most polite law officers it has been my displeasure to meet. I can't speak for other police forces.
I'm talking about right now. Not what could maybe/possibly/hypothetically happen in the future. The fact that the government has instituted new laws in the last decade and will continue to create new laws has no bearing on this. If they start making this mandatory I'll jump on the angry bandwagon. The fact remains that this was put out by a private company, and not the government. As for insurance agencies being heavily regulated, I'd say that's pretty necessary, wouldn't you? They can turn over my number of hard brakes to the government if they want. I know you both can read so why don't you get this? You cannot be penalized when using this device. That means you can simultaneously slam the brakes and gas all the way to your alien awareness convention and it won't change your rate. Big brother is watching you? Hard to say America is free? How crazy are you? You opt in and install it yourself. We're very far away from a violation of freedom.
Well looks like I had better buy an even faster car soon, sounds like my days of recreational speeding on deserted highways are numbered.
I laugh at anyone that thinks this will actually LOWER their rates. Just like "going paperless" on your electric bill or your bank statement doesn't provide you with any discount, it just feathers the pockets of the swindler company jumping CEO. What you're paying now IS the baseline.. having them monitor your driving habits can only lead to higher rates.