Author Topic: Your GM car may be watching you  (Read 151 times)

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Richard230

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on: March 19, 2024, 09:32:14 pm
There was a kind of long and scary article in my newspaper today written by Kashmir Hill and published by The New York Times, titled "Autos share insurance reports about drivers". It says that new GM cars are collecting information on every movement that you make when driving your car. It is then sent to a NY global data  broker company called LexisNexis who then packages your driving experience into a long report (one report was 258 pages long). That report is then sent to insurance companies that contract with them.

In the article's example, the report for a driver owning a GM Bolt included 130 pages detailing the dates of his 640 vehicle trips, including start and end times, an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only information that the report didn't contain was where the car was driven. The article mentioned that Honda, Kia and Hyundai also collect driver information, but it was mostly about GM's OnStar Smart Driver system.

One Cadillac owner had his insurance doubled after he was unable to get seven insurance companies to provide him with a policy. An owner of a Corvette was caught speeding on a track day at a race track and apparently ended up with a black mark on his insurance driving record.

I think BMW collects this kind of information on their latest motorcycles and I wouldn't put it past them to share it with a data broker sometime in the future - unless the EU puts a stop to this sort of data sharing.
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Leofric

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Reply #1 on: March 19, 2024, 10:28:33 pm
George Orwell knew way back where it was heading !


GlennF

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Reply #2 on: March 19, 2024, 10:42:31 pm
Even though insurance specifically excludes damage while racing, it is easy to see why insurance companies might be wary of someone who takes their car to track days.  Among other things track accidents are likely, in many cases, to suddenly have happened on the road when the claim goes in.


zimmemr

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Reply #3 on: March 20, 2024, 12:20:48 am
There was a kind of long and scary article in my newspaper today written by Kashmir Hill and published by The New York Times, titled "Autos share insurance reports about drivers". It says that new GM cars are collecting information on every movement that you make when driving your car. It is then sent to a NY global data  broker company called LexisNexis who then packages your driving experience into a long report (one report was 258 pages long). That report is then sent to insurance companies that contract with them.

In the article's example, the report for a driver owning a GM Bolt included 130 pages detailing the dates of his 640 vehicle trips, including start and end times, an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only information that the report didn't contain was where the car was driven. The article mentioned that Honda, Kia and Hyundai also collect driver information, but it was mostly about GM's OnStar Smart Driver system.

One Cadillac owner had his insurance doubled after he was unable to get seven insurance companies to provide him with a policy. An owner of a Corvette was caught speeding on a track day at a race track and apparently ended up with a black mark on his insurance driving record.

I think BMW collects this kind of information on their latest motorcycles and I wouldn't put it past them to share it with a data broker sometime in the future - unless the EU puts a stop to this sort of data sharing.

 All new over the road trucks collect that information as well and have been for quite a while. Whenever one of our drivers was involved in any type of incident the first thing we'd do is pull the log out of the ECU. Ironically the info just as often exonerated the driver as it did hang them.


AzCal Retred

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Reply #4 on: March 20, 2024, 04:01:52 am
Another step closer to a social credit score. Personally I think we'd be better off excluding about 20% of the eejits currently driving. Whether the decision should be in the tender hands of the insurance folks, that's up for debate. It would be informative to require new drivers to drive a free State Monitored Corolla or similar for the first couple years, that might sort some of the wheat from the chaff. Not everyone is temperamentally suited to drive on public roadways. After they prove they have enough self-discipline to keep a lid on their impulses, maybe then let them drive whatever they want. As was pointed out, tech really isn't an issue here, just deciding what to do with the data is.

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GlennF

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Reply #5 on: March 20, 2024, 04:37:07 am
It is complicated.

Australia uses a points system where if you have too many offenses in too short a time your are automatically disqualified. 

Which generally works fine but DOES disadvantage people that are on the road a lot, including professional drivers and some young folk who tend to do interstate road trips on an almost weekly basis.


Richard230

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Reply #6 on: March 20, 2024, 02:16:58 pm
One thing that caught my eye is that since most governments' regulations require that where you drive can not be recorded, if you are at a track day, the data collected will not show if you are at a race course or traveling 150 mph on the street, and the insurance company may act accordingly and drop you from their policy, or increase your rates substantially.
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