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This is one of the least bad invasions of privacy I've seen. It shifts the burden of insurance premiums more towards those likely to cause accidents, and incen

This is one of the least bad invasions of privacy I've seen. It shifts the burden of insurance premiums more towards those likely to cause accidents, and incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. There are actual benefits to responsible people, and to society at large, which is not something you frequently see with invasion of privacy.

imgabe 3y ago
Assuming the data is only ever used for its stated purpose and not anything else…
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  The data collected here is just as likely to be misused as data that's collected that doesn't lead to any societal benefits.
- don-code 3y ago
  The data doesn't need to be used now, today, for this purpose. What happens when an insurance company foists a new privacy policy on you, the insured, saying that it'll be using back data that it's collected for new purposes? To my knowledge, there are no laws on the books in the US that prevent that kind of behavior (ex-post-facto only applies to the legal system), and I'd imagine few would change insurance providers because of a privacy policy change.
bsder 3y ago
> incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. Think very carefully about whether you want to be behind a person who is scrupulously obeying every single traffic law. Especially if you get 3 of them abreast.
- asoneth 3y ago
  That seems like... a good outcome? The privacy implications troubling enough to give me pause but the idea of more people actually driving at safe and legal speeds seems like a net positive, but perhaps there's some disaster scenario I'm not considering?
  - bsder 3y ago
    Traffic flow relies on people mostly obeying the rules but being slightly flexible about breaking them to be courteous. A car passing another at exactly 55mph while another car is going the same speed will take forever. We expect people to pull out, accelerate slightly, and then pull back in to get out of the way after passing even if that means you go above the speed limit for a bit. Two lane roads often clog with truck traffic up hills. People pass these trucks on lanes in areas that allow it. The problem is that if you get too many people stacked up behind the truck who won't pass because they won't accelerate past a speed limit, nobody can pass and people will be trapped for hours at half the speed limit. We call scrupulous adherence to rules "malicious compliance" for a reason.
    - asoneth 3y ago
      > A car passing another at exactly 55mph while another car is going the same speed will take forever. Why would either driver would try to pass the other if they are going the same speed? If they're not passing then they should move to the right out of courtesy. (And they're legally required to in some states.) > The problem is that if you get too many people stacked up behind the truck who won't pass because they won't accelerate past a speed limit, nobody can pass and people will be trapped for hours at half the speed limit. If the truck driver is traveling "at half the speed limit" at any point then it should be a simple matter for even the most principled drivers to pass them quickly and safely. Whereas if the truck driver is traveling near the speed limit then the line of people "trapped for hours" are also moving near speed limit which seems fine. Plus, drivers of slower vehicles (trucks, RVs, farm equipment) are often courteous and pull over occasionally to let other drivers pass. So that leaves cases where someone is driving a bit under the speed limit and is unwilling or unable to move to the side to let others pass. I don't begrudge someone breaking the limit by ~5mph to pass in such a case, but I also don't mind being "trapped" behind someone who scrupulously obeys every single traffic law even if it slows my journey by a few minutes. That would certainly be preferable to the unsafe behavior I see out on the roadways on a daily basis.
      - bsder 3y ago
clumsysmurf 3y ago
Probably safe to assume that this feed will be sold to Lexis Nexis or Acxiom, etc. From there, who know how it will be used for or against you in whatever sphere of life, at whatever time.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  That would be problematic when the system is linked to a car and not the driver.
  - rationalist 3y ago
    Just like tracking is linked to a phone and not its owner.
Tarball10 3y ago
I find it dubious that people who get good scores on these telematics are actually better drivers or less likely to cause accidents. I've been stuck behind people doing 40 mph on the entrance ramp trying to merge into a 70 mph interstate. It's terrifying. They get a great rating for their leisurely acceleration, while vehicles on the interstate have to slam on their brakes and swerve to avoid them.
- asoneth 3y ago
  I am also skeptical of the accuracy of the initial rules but this seems like a domain that should be fairly easy to refine with a large enough corpus of data. Once an insurance company has a sufficient number of claims from telematics users I would wager that they will be able to find strong signals in the telematics data to identify customers who are likely to be expensive.
  - interlinked 3y ago
    It's impossible to tell if someone is driving properly based on just sensor data because if it were, we would have full self driving.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      It's ok we'll just feed your speeds, GPS locations, braking data, and acceleration data into a black box AI model and have it spit out a bill multiplier. All hail AI.
    - asoneth 3y ago
      Determining whether a particular driver is driving properly seems overkill. Any correlation between driving behavior and insurance payouts seems like it would be sufficient to improve the accuracy of your risk scores. Let's say you only analyze vehicle speed data. That is clearly insufficient for training self-driving. But it is very likely there is some correlation between speed and insurance payouts. For example, say you are able to segment your customer base including one subset with drivers who typically drive >80 miles an hour and another subset with drivers who typically drive <55 miles per hour. Are you saying that you would predict that the two populations have identical risk profiles? That speed data has no correlation with risk?
quickthrowman 3y ago
> and incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. Going 55 mph when everyone else is going 70 mph is extremely dangerous but the insurance company will give you good marks for obeying the speed limit. I refuse to use one of these monitoring devices, it’s extremely intrusive and patronizing. Insurance companies are not going bankrupt due to pricing risk incorrectly.
- trgn 3y ago
  It's not. Going 70 in close proximity is extremely dangerous.
hakfoo 3y ago
The problem is that the data is interpreted without context. At worst, it incentivizes bad behaviour. The box knows I slammed on the brakes. Does it know the schmuck in the next lane dove in front of me? If the user figures out the way to minimize beeping/penalties is to drive 45 in a 50 zone, does he now become a hazard for other drivers? Will fender-benders go up because drivers have been disincentivized against hard stops to the point where they risk tighter and tighter spacing and go too far?
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  > The box knows I slammed on the brakes. Does it know the schmuck in the next lane dove in front of me? It doesn't really matter. You are still incentivized financially by the insurance company to slam on the brakes to avoid accidents. > Will fender-benders go up because drivers have been disincentivized against hard stops to the point where they risk tighter and tighter spacing and go too far? The way this is being interpreted is as if people will respond to an extreme degree to any incentive whatsoever, and they will choose the worst response to that incentive automatically. Your insurance rates will not double because you slammed on the brakes once. And people are probably more likely to learn to drive with better spacing so they don't have to frequently slam on the brakes, as opposed to playing a game of chicken trying to avoid having the insurance system know they once had to press the brake pedal hard once.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    > The way this is being interpreted is as if people will respond to an extreme degree to any incentive whatsoever, and they will choose the worst response to that incentive automatically. The interpretation is that (for most people) regular and consistent incentives/punishments at frequent intervals are more habit forming than irregular incentives/punishments that occur rarely and randomly. If people were capable of internalizing that they had to drive safely to avoid having their insurance go up, then what would be the point of these boxes? Why introduce the reward/punishment structure at all if insurance premiums on their own are enough to influence behavior? Frequency/predictability are hugely important for habit forming. A box that beeps at you every single time you brake too hard is a more effective punishment than a random insurance premium increase. Honestly, the premium risks are kind of irrelevant in both cases -- getting immediate negative feedback every time you brake is the problem.
cjs_ac 3y ago
These devices disincentivise hard braking when a pedestrian steps into the road in front of your car. The idea that these devices can measure safe driving technique comes from the same school of thought as: - More productive programmers write more lines of code per unit time; - Democracy puts the best people in positions of power; and - Telling the teacher is the best way to deal with bullying. Road rules are simply the first order effectors of driving style; the exact conditions of the road are second-order effectors; the intentions and behaviour of other drivers are third-order effectors. All must be taken into account to drive safely.
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  > These devices disincentivise hard braking when a pedestrian steps into the road in front of your car. The monetary incentive is still wildly in favor of hard braking as opposed to hitting a pedestrian. I don't understand this criticism.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    That is not even remotely how people in the real world think; most people who are even consciously trying to think about long-term consequences struggle to prioritize safety measures while they're being actively discouraged against prioritizing them. Consider that if people were capable of internalizing that hitting a pedestrian was more costly than being 5 minutes late to work -- and were capable of consistently applying that cost-benefit analysis in their everyday life, we wouldn't need laws like speed limits in the first place. The human brain is not wired to think about risk in that way. It is wired to respond to regular consistent punishments for braking by braking less often. It is wired to respond to irregular novel punishments for rare events like hitting a pedestrian by ignoring that risk.

imgabe 3y ago

Assuming the data is only ever used for its stated purpose and not anything else…

oatmeal1 3y ago
The data collected here is just as likely to be misused as data that's collected that doesn't lead to any societal benefits.
don-code 3y ago
The data doesn't need to be used now, today, for this purpose. What happens when an insurance company foists a new privacy policy on you, the insured, saying that it'll be using back data that it's collected for new purposes? To my knowledge, there are no laws on the books in the US that prevent that kind of behavior (ex-post-facto only applies to the legal system), and I'd imagine few would change insurance providers because of a privacy policy change.

bsder 3y ago

> incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. Think very carefully about whether you want to be behind a person who is scrupulously obeying every single traffic law. Especially if you get 3 of them abreast.

asoneth 3y ago
That seems like... a good outcome? The privacy implications troubling enough to give me pause but the idea of more people actually driving at safe and legal speeds seems like a net positive, but perhaps there's some disaster scenario I'm not considering?
- bsder 3y ago
  Traffic flow relies on people mostly obeying the rules but being slightly flexible about breaking them to be courteous. A car passing another at exactly 55mph while another car is going the same speed will take forever. We expect people to pull out, accelerate slightly, and then pull back in to get out of the way after passing even if that means you go above the speed limit for a bit. Two lane roads often clog with truck traffic up hills. People pass these trucks on lanes in areas that allow it. The problem is that if you get too many people stacked up behind the truck who won't pass because they won't accelerate past a speed limit, nobody can pass and people will be trapped for hours at half the speed limit. We call scrupulous adherence to rules "malicious compliance" for a reason.
  - asoneth 3y ago
    > A car passing another at exactly 55mph while another car is going the same speed will take forever. Why would either driver would try to pass the other if they are going the same speed? If they're not passing then they should move to the right out of courtesy. (And they're legally required to in some states.) > The problem is that if you get too many people stacked up behind the truck who won't pass because they won't accelerate past a speed limit, nobody can pass and people will be trapped for hours at half the speed limit. If the truck driver is traveling "at half the speed limit" at any point then it should be a simple matter for even the most principled drivers to pass them quickly and safely. Whereas if the truck driver is traveling near the speed limit then the line of people "trapped for hours" are also moving near speed limit which seems fine. Plus, drivers of slower vehicles (trucks, RVs, farm equipment) are often courteous and pull over occasionally to let other drivers pass. So that leaves cases where someone is driving a bit under the speed limit and is unwilling or unable to move to the side to let others pass. I don't begrudge someone breaking the limit by ~5mph to pass in such a case, but I also don't mind being "trapped" behind someone who scrupulously obeys every single traffic law even if it slows my journey by a few minutes. That would certainly be preferable to the unsafe behavior I see out on the roadways on a daily basis.
    - bsder 3y ago

clumsysmurf 3y ago

Probably safe to assume that this feed will be sold to Lexis Nexis or Acxiom, etc. From there, who know how it will be used for or against you in whatever sphere of life, at whatever time.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
That would be problematic when the system is linked to a car and not the driver.
- rationalist 3y ago
  Just like tracking is linked to a phone and not its owner.

Tarball10 3y ago

I find it dubious that people who get good scores on these telematics are actually better drivers or less likely to cause accidents. I've been stuck behind people doing 40 mph on the entrance ramp trying to merge into a 70 mph interstate. It's terrifying. They get a great rating for their leisurely acceleration, while vehicles on the interstate have to slam on their brakes and swerve to avoid them.

asoneth 3y ago
I am also skeptical of the accuracy of the initial rules but this seems like a domain that should be fairly easy to refine with a large enough corpus of data. Once an insurance company has a sufficient number of claims from telematics users I would wager that they will be able to find strong signals in the telematics data to identify customers who are likely to be expensive.
- interlinked 3y ago
  It's impossible to tell if someone is driving properly based on just sensor data because if it were, we would have full self driving.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    It's ok we'll just feed your speeds, GPS locations, braking data, and acceleration data into a black box AI model and have it spit out a bill multiplier. All hail AI.
  - asoneth 3y ago
    Determining whether a particular driver is driving properly seems overkill. Any correlation between driving behavior and insurance payouts seems like it would be sufficient to improve the accuracy of your risk scores. Let's say you only analyze vehicle speed data. That is clearly insufficient for training self-driving. But it is very likely there is some correlation between speed and insurance payouts. For example, say you are able to segment your customer base including one subset with drivers who typically drive >80 miles an hour and another subset with drivers who typically drive <55 miles per hour. Are you saying that you would predict that the two populations have identical risk profiles? That speed data has no correlation with risk?

quickthrowman 3y ago

> and incentivizes people to minimize dangerous behavior behind the wheel. Going 55 mph when everyone else is going 70 mph is extremely dangerous but the insurance company will give you good marks for obeying the speed limit. I refuse to use one of these monitoring devices, it’s extremely intrusive and patronizing. Insurance companies are not going bankrupt due to pricing risk incorrectly.

trgn 3y ago
It's not. Going 70 in close proximity is extremely dangerous.

hakfoo 3y ago

The problem is that the data is interpreted without context. At worst, it incentivizes bad behaviour. The box knows I slammed on the brakes. Does it know the schmuck in the next lane dove in front of me? If the user figures out the way to minimize beeping/penalties is to drive 45 in a 50 zone, does he now become a hazard for other drivers? Will fender-benders go up because drivers have been disincentivized against hard stops to the point where they risk tighter and tighter spacing and go too far?

oatmeal1 3y ago
> The box knows I slammed on the brakes. Does it know the schmuck in the next lane dove in front of me? It doesn't really matter. You are still incentivized financially by the insurance company to slam on the brakes to avoid accidents. > Will fender-benders go up because drivers have been disincentivized against hard stops to the point where they risk tighter and tighter spacing and go too far? The way this is being interpreted is as if people will respond to an extreme degree to any incentive whatsoever, and they will choose the worst response to that incentive automatically. Your insurance rates will not double because you slammed on the brakes once. And people are probably more likely to learn to drive with better spacing so they don't have to frequently slam on the brakes, as opposed to playing a game of chicken trying to avoid having the insurance system know they once had to press the brake pedal hard once.
- danShumway 3y ago
  > The way this is being interpreted is as if people will respond to an extreme degree to any incentive whatsoever, and they will choose the worst response to that incentive automatically. The interpretation is that (for most people) regular and consistent incentives/punishments at frequent intervals are more habit forming than irregular incentives/punishments that occur rarely and randomly. If people were capable of internalizing that they had to drive safely to avoid having their insurance go up, then what would be the point of these boxes? Why introduce the reward/punishment structure at all if insurance premiums on their own are enough to influence behavior? Frequency/predictability are hugely important for habit forming. A box that beeps at you every single time you brake too hard is a more effective punishment than a random insurance premium increase. Honestly, the premium risks are kind of irrelevant in both cases -- getting immediate negative feedback every time you brake is the problem.

cjs_ac 3y ago

These devices disincentivise hard braking when a pedestrian steps into the road in front of your car. The idea that these devices can measure safe driving technique comes from the same school of thought as: - More productive programmers write more lines of code per unit time; - Democracy puts the best people in positions of power; and - Telling the teacher is the best way to deal with bullying. Road rules are simply the first order effectors of driving style; the exact conditions of the road are second-order effectors; the intentions and behaviour of other drivers are third-order effectors. All must be taken into account to drive safely.

oatmeal1 3y ago
> These devices disincentivise hard braking when a pedestrian steps into the road in front of your car. The monetary incentive is still wildly in favor of hard braking as opposed to hitting a pedestrian. I don't understand this criticism.
- danShumway 3y ago
  That is not even remotely how people in the real world think; most people who are even consciously trying to think about long-term consequences struggle to prioritize safety measures while they're being actively discouraged against prioritizing them. Consider that if people were capable of internalizing that hitting a pedestrian was more costly than being 5 minutes late to work -- and were capable of consistently applying that cost-benefit analysis in their everyday life, we wouldn't need laws like speed limits in the first place. The human brain is not wired to think about risk in that way. It is wired to respond to regular consistent punishments for braking by braking less often. It is wired to respond to irregular novel punishments for rare events like hitting a pedestrian by ignoring that risk.