Many private companies surveilling everyone without anyone's knowledge is terrible. Companies using these scores are really only targeting a group of people that allow the collection to happen.
My car insurance company would sure love to put a tracker in my car but there is no way in hell that is going to happen. I'm sure my driving style would qualify me for higher rates, yet I've never caused an accident or made a claim where I was at fault.
Plus why single out insurance companies and ban them from creepily tracking you wherever you go and not all the other companies who do that with your cell phone.
Also to be pedantic, the don't want to put trackers in the car, that is expensive. They want to use your cell phone like all the other apps tracking you, or they want the car manufactures to let them in on their data since most modern cars have the ability to track and broadcast location.
>made a claim where I was at fault.
That's a big caveat. There are plenty of accidents that are truly not one parties fault, but according to law even being judged as 49% at fault is still "not at fault". And even in cases of 0% at fault as determine by the insurance adjusters, theres a big chance one still had contributing factors.
Also, there's a big chance not at fault claims will be taken into account when pricing you and raise your prices. Just right??
On the other hand, not at fault accidents do correlated with higher risk, and it's easy to see why. For example, people who get rear ended are not at fault. But following the car ahead too closely leads to needing to brake harder, increasing the chance of being rear ended. Following too closely also increases the chance of rear ending the vehicle in front.
I have no driving record and I've caused no accidents. If I put a tracking device in my car today my rates would go up because I accelerate quickly and brake hard when conditions allow. That is not right.
You did not do that, so they raise your rates.
Edit: not that you were at fault or did anything wrong.
My point is that the insurance companies strongest incentive is to pay out as little as possible. This includes payments made where their client was not at fault. If it were up to them, everyone would pay all their premiums on time and never drive.
To quote wikipedia: If the likelihood of an insured event is so high, or the cost of the event so large, that the resulting premium is large relative to the amount of protection offered, then it is not likely that the insurance will be purchased, even if on offer. Furthermore, as the accounting profession formally recognizes in financial accounting standards, the premium cannot be so large that there is not a reasonable chance of a significant loss to the insurer. If there is no such chance of loss, then the transaction may have the form of insurance, but not the substance (see the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board pronouncement number 113: "Accounting and Reporting for Reinsurance of Short-Duration and Long-Duration Contracts"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance
It's not about covering costs to provide a needed service. That would be a public service
This is a private company looking for profit. They want to raise your rates.
> the accounting profession formally recognizes in financial accounting standards, the premium cannot be so large that there is not a reasonable chance of a significant loss to the insurer
The vast majority of automobiles do not hold their value, they depreciate over time. If I've had my car for say 5 years and I've paid the premiums for 5 years, I may have already paid the full value of my car as it is today due to depreciation. I probably pay for one minor incident per year in premiums. Unless I total my within the first 5 years I'm not really getting insurance what I'm really getting is a payment plan for a payout I most likely will never get.
You might understand this but many people today do not, which is why they expect medical insurance to cover 100% probability events like an annual checkup with the primary care physician.
> Making apps and integrating with telematics doesn't come for free and its not coming out of the insurance company bottom line.
yes, it is. their bottom line has to make room for that by increasing prices. in insurance as in anything, you get what you pay for.
Cars are safer than ever. https://one.nhtsa.gov/nhtsa/timeline/index.html
The folks with those fancy cars are paying into the system too, insurance is about pooling after all.
It seems you have a point about bodily injury claims. https://www.insurance-research.org/sites/default/files/downl...
However, it looks like that is mostly due to more lawyers being involved in bodily injury claims. More lawyers involved points to a failure with insurance company's ability to properly adjudicate claims. When insurance is only about profits and finding tools to further squeeze your existing clients no one benefits. Insurance companies do not need more ways to rate me, they just need to do the job they get paid to do.
Also if you ever have a large claim paid, you'll quickly discover it isn't about pooling at all. Every insurer will simple decline to quote you or simply quote you some insane price. Even without accidents I once got a quote that was obviously a response of "please do not purchase this policy" when I tried to get basic liability insurance.
And this is the problem with insurance being mandatory. Their business model is to force everyone to buy an expensive subscription, and then increase costs every time everyone actually uses their service in order to recoup costs.
Yes, I am oversimplifying, but holy fuck do I hate insurance companies since I have never gotten one to pay out a claim without suing first.
If statistically other drivers who do that are more likely to, on average, result in a loss for the insurer, they are right to raise your rates. "Past Performance is no guarantee of future results"
With enough data, maybe it would support your assertion that you are, in fact, a very safe driver, by realizing that you only drive fast at certain times, in certain locations that are statistically lower risk.
This argument could as well be applied regarding certain protected characteristics of the driver (such as race, gender, sexual orientation, etc).
All it takes is for you to misjudge the conditions one time (are you claiming to be infallible?), or for another road user to do something you were unable to anticipate, and suddenly this driving habit of yours does contribute to a higher risk of an incident that results in a claim. (Even if the incident still isn't considered to be your fault; your driving style reduces safety margins for everyone.)
Giving the insurance company more ways to judge me only enables them to charge me more, without my actual level of risk changing at all.
This is illegal in the UK and EU, fortunately. A real victory for gender equality, even if it means women paying more.
If you take your cell phone in the car with you, they are already tracking you.
It's already happening, now, unfortunately. All your tweets (posted & liked) etc analyzed and flagged for bad language, drug/alcohol mentions, bigotry etc. and a report generated for HR.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22211363
The company in question is used by Sterling and HireRight, so this isn't some unknown/niche company.
The tweet thread under the link is well worth seeing.
Taken from the company in question's site (https://fama.io/product/):
> What Fama finds...
> Our machine learning technology has flagged hundreds of thousands of instances of misogyny, bigotry, racism, violence and criminal behavior in publicly available online content.
If you go and compare what the product actually seems to do - tracking down your Twitter account and grepping every Tweet you interacted with against a list of "thoughtcrime" words (like "hell" or "ass") - you can almost feel the next AI winter coming. How many more bullshit companies calling their fake, broken and trivial technology "AI" or "Machine Learning" will it take until the whole field of ML gets derailed by bad reputation? At least, (as much as I know history), the last AI winter involved companies trying but failing at AI. This time around, they're not even trying.
Funfact: when I first moved to USA I would practice emoting in the mirror so Americans could read my face and wouldn’t penalize me during interactions. Now people back home say I “grin like an american”
> can’t say anything in public
Ever noticed how Gen Z is switching back to private chatrooms and message groups? Public stuff is all polished and curated.
They don’t get that you could have 99.99999% of all possible information on a person AND that the missing 0.00001% could change everything you know about them.
It is true that some corporations are so big that they influence lawmakers just as ultra wealthy people always have. Indeed, if corporations were able to do the same things governments did and with the same authority, this process of influencing the government would be unnecessary.