Now THAT's Progressive

This already exists. It's called OnStar.
Cops can even contact OnStar and have them apply the brakes on a vehicle if it's fleeing.

 

Wrong. Why don't you explain in a way that makes any kind of sense how it's going to raise rates? It's been provided in pretty clear English how it lowers rates and does not raise rates. Do you understand at all how insurance companies calculate rates? I'm guessing you don't so let me help you out a bit. Actuaries compile data, for example your age, occupation, how much you drive, what type of car you drive, where you live, your credit score, etc. They also look at your driving history. That guy who got a DUI last year? He pays a higher rate because he's a higher risk. Someone who is proven to be a safer driver because their driving has been been measured? He's at a lower risk of making a claim so the company can offer him a lower rate and remain profitable. If you think more information always leads to higher rates you're pretty clueless.

Secondly, discounts aren't about making less money. They never have been and they never will. Do you think coupons are available because people want you to pay less? No, they want you to be more likely to make the purchase. Discounts and the potential for discounts encourage people to switch companies. That's the second part of what you're seeing here, but not understanding.

 

Not to mention that this system could be used to monitor your in-vehicle conversations. Apparently the Ninth Circuit Court determined that the government may NOT do this because it would somehow disable the safety system. Not that that matters when OnStar has admitted they SELL "anonymized" info recorded by the devices to third parties.

Kind of going on a tangent here, but I can't get my mind around how someone could willingly trade away their privacy for security. There's a quote by one of the founding fathers on the subject if I remember correctly. To loosely paraphrase, it's something like "If you're willing to give away freedom and privacy just to feel more secure, you're a fucking idiot and all you deserve is the air you breathe, because at least we give that to the rest of the cattle."

Maybe I'm just on my period, but in the past two weeks I feel like I've been inundated with nonstop examples of stupidity and shortsightedness.

As for Progressive's option, hell no. I get cheaper insurance than they can offer as is. Yesterday morning, I passed someone on the onramp to the highway because they were going 40 and I would rather come two feet from sideswiping someone than try to merge into highway traffic at 25MPH under the speed limit
. Coming home from work today, in broad daylight, I had to slam on the brakes in the turn lane because someone coming the other way somehow didn't notice a 2,000+lb truck sitting right in front of them.

To sum it up, as someone already put so eloquently, I'm not going to drive like a fucking pussy to save a buck.

As an aside, whoever said this is only going to raise rates is half-wrong. The company has stated that they will not increase your rate based on what your Big Brother device tells them. That said, anyone who doesn't think they're trying to come up with a way to use the data analyzed by these devices to come up with an excuse to raise rates overall, is adorably naive and probably lives in a fantasy world with unicorns and sheep whose wool is made of cotton candy.

 

Agreed. If you aren't speeding or just generally driving like a jackass, what do you care? While we're at it, lets put camera's in everyone's houses. That's where the majority of domestic abuse takes place and we're all against domestic abuse right? I mean, if you're not beating your SO, then you should have nothing to hide, right?

 

Huh. This is interesting. My Uni developed one of these for a client a couple of years ago; it's been successfully trialed, but looks like he's missed the boat, in the U.S. market at least. We marketed it to two groups of people: parents concerned about their teenager's driving habits, and insurance companies. Parents were coming up to us after our presentations asking if they could buy it now, or install a trial version. Insurance companies went mad for it. (I've tried to sell about 4 things to insurance companies over my short career, and this is the only one they jumped at.) They essentially wanted the last 30 seconds of driving before a crash, so they could determine fault. Oh, and the version we developed had a camera built in that tracked the driver's eye movements to see if he was tired or distracted, and a mic to tell if they were on the phone. Mark my words: these are going to be everywhere.

I have to admit, I'm a little bit surprised at some of your responses expressing faith in insurance companies. I've been doing some cursory google searching, and these seem to be the same insurance companies that delay treatment / compensation to terminal cancer patients until they die to save a buck. (I'm not talking about conspiracy blogs here either, I'm talking about a congressional record which pops up in the first page of a google search). Don't they have a history of tying up medical patients in endless lawsuits to avoid paying out? Why wouldn't they use these devices to attempt to avoid paying out on car crashes? "We've determined you were driving sub-optimally, you are going to have pay a higher excess", for example?

Mmmm. Dubious. Still, this doesn't worry me anywhere near as much as the video surveillance technology produced by another University which has just had a couple of million invested into it. It analyses the footage from surveillance cameras for any 'unusual' event. No doubt that it works brilliantly for capturing 'unwelcome events'; I just don't like the idea that I will targeted for surveillance if my behaviour doesn't conform to an artificial 'norm'. Google iCetana for a glimpse into the future...

 

This thread is making me wonder how some of you work up the courage to leave the house in the morning with this much paranoia.

 

When evaluating a conspiracy theory, I ask three things.

1. Is it possible?
2. What are the benefits?
3. Going off these two, is it likely?

Right now, most states mandate that you have car insurance. It's a pretty small stretch for the government to say, "If you're going to be covered, you're going to need a monitor mounted in your car." Obviously, the result of this would be to mandate the monitors. Benefits would be tremendous - you can determine who's at fault in a crash, catch suspects fleeing from the police, track down stolen cars, monitor criminals' whereabouts, enforce traffic safety, collect tolls automatically from certain roads...

That would be a pretty easy sell to most of Congress. All this from a bunch of relatively simple devices and a computer system to process the data. The savings from a centralized tracking system would be tremendous. Police officers could go into the database "with good reason" (translated: Whenever they damn well please) and use that data to solve crimes and enforce the law.

The thing that separates this from the mind control rays and UFOs is that we already have the technology; putting it into place is just a matter of engineering and getting stupid people to say, "Oh, that's not so bad." I'm not going to change my habits in any way aside from saying "Heeeelll no" to any attempt to put that shit in my car, but I WILL take to the streets if they start trying to make it mandatory.

 

Uhhh, no they're not, property and casualty insurance companies are completely separate from health and life insurance companies. They even have a different organization for accrediting their actuaries, those overly academic fucks.

 

I think you may be confused that because somebody disagrees with you it means they aren't understanding. Some of us have been around a long time, and recognize that some things that get introduced as simple ideas have a way of creeping into becoming standards.

 

He said the rates would only go up. I explained why that's not the case. I'm not missing anything. If you're paranoid about the future that's your business, but he clearly didn't get how insurance companies set rates.

 

I think it's laughable how many of you made the jump from "Private companies bent on making as much profit as possible" to "Big Government is taking away our freedoms and putting microchips in our children."

 

Better than what Penn State is trying to put in our children, if you ask me.

 

Are you fucking joking? You honestly don't see the obviously easy transition to the government using this technology to track our driving? Like I said before, I have no problem with a private company doing this because it's voluntary, I won't enroll in it, but I don't think it's bad to offer it. But are you seriously suggesting the existence of this technology won't likely lead to more tracking?

 

What we really need to do is quit with all this technology. The government couldn't track ANYONE back in the Stone Age.

 

No, again, you explained why you think that's not the case. And, sorry, but me simply stating what I think the future holds for this doesn't make me paranoid. It was just commentary based on my past experiences.

 

Well, I'm going off my past experiences. I used to work for an insurance company that sold auto insurance, I know how they work. Is it possible that in the future these devices could raise rates for some customers? I guess, but I don't think that future is as foreseeable as you do. Right now offering this device is a competitive advantage for progressive. It's not an advantage when they start cranking up the rates because of it.

Also, my main contention is him saying it can only raise rates. This is completely baseless and flies in the face of how these companies have acted since their inception. They'll evaluate the data to adjust the rate, and they will lower rates for lower risk drivers. It's what they do with every other piece of information they can gather and correlate. Why are they going to change the industry standard for this and only use it to crank up rates? They won't and I can say that with 99%+ certainty.

Do you have an argument for why I'm wrong? Go ahead, I'm all ears.

 

Whether or not this is true depends entirely on the content of the statement in question.




Many economic models of insurance tend to support Kampf Trinker's observation. The idea behind it is that since insurance companies can't differentiate b/t high and low risk applicants as well as they'd like to, they have to overcharge low-risk drivers, and this make them less likely to purchase insurance. If they were able to more accurate gauge risk level, they would be able to price and differentiate their offering accordingly.

Imagine the following stylized example (trust me, there are models that take into account things like statutory requirements, but here's not the time or place): It costs 3 dollars to insurance a low risk driver, and 7 to insure a high risk driver. Insurance is worth $4 to a good driver, $7.50 to a bad driver. A driver is equally likely to be good or bad. Absent information, an insurance company must charge a driver $5 in order to break even. At this price, the good drivers walk away, because it's not worth. Then the insurance companies get stuck with a pool of high risk drivers, a sub-optimal situation.

In a more realistic model, maybe than walk away, they simply get a sub-optimal level of insurance, and pay more for it.

So yeah, if you're a shitty driver, this might make your rates go up. However, for the other end of the pool, it's perfectly plausible that it will result in lower rates. The result could (and probably will) be increased price differentiation, not universally increased rates.


A significant portion of this thread appears to be colored by the assumption that insurance companies are somehow more inherently awful than other corporations, and somehow less likely to introduce things that gain them customer share and work to some consumers' benefit. They're companies like any other.

 

I can't tell you with certainty your rates will go UP, however I can tell you with 100 percent certainty they can go down.

I am currently with Progressive and when I first signed up with this device, I had three moving violations on my record (I'm not a bad driver by any means, it was just various things that lapsed that I thought were taken care of but never were, but I digress). The device when left plugged in for several months saved me $243 over a 6 month period on my insurance premium because I know I don't drive like a jackass. That was on a 19 percent savings with a max of 30 percent savings. Currently I'm paying about $177 a month for full coverage with a 1k deductible. The savings is no brainer for me and believe me, there is no one more distrusting about companies than me. This program is legit.

 

MoreCowbell finally explained it properly. In the long run, whether or not you sign onto this program, it will lead to lower rates for safer people and higher rates for more reckless drivers. It provides more data to the insurance company on which to provide an accurate coverage plan.

It's called information asymmetry, and it's pretty much the source of certain people supplementing the cost of other people. (The wikipedia article even uses car insurance as an example of this concept.)

Another benefit of this program is it creates a monetary incentive for people to drive safer. It creates a monetary incentive for people to drive safer. That is by far the best part of this program. I am all for it.

EDIT: It is kind of stupid that some people here are assuming this program will compel everyone to drive 40mph on the highway. I mean... come on.