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[–] 114 points 2 years ago (2 children)

LOL I always knew that creepy Life360 shit would come back to bite people in the ass eventually.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    My daughter has been trying to get me to install this for years. My refusal has been vindicated! I kept telling her I don't trust it. And she drives like me and her premiums are nuts even for her age and she's been lucky and has a great driving record.

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  • [–] 103 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

    Driving behavior analysis, or telematics, as the insurance industry calls it, could be better for consumers, leading to personalized rates that are more fair. Plus, if people have to pay more for their risky driving, they may drive more cautiously, leading to safer roads. But this will happen only if drivers are aware that their behavior is being monitored.

    I'm so sick of this shit.

    Just like the stop sign cameras, this only increases safety by penalizing and then monetizing minor mistakes that humans make. This is not about safety, it's about maximizing income through technological micromanaging of drivers who have not caused an accident and were not in danger of causing one.

    You'd also have to be a damn fool not to realize that all the data they're collecting may not apply to their rate structure today, but in the future that rate structure will change, and suddenly a history of driver data you let them gather about you goes from being unremarkable to indicative of a problem.

    The shareholders are demanding a blood sacrifice, so rates suddenly go up for people that have a driver score beneath a certain threshold where previously that threshold was higher.

    Or some new bullshit study comes out claiming people that listen to podcasts while driving are infinitesimally more likely to cause an accident than people that listen to music, and whoops, Michael Barbaro has been your constant companion on every morning commute for the last 4 years. That's a pattern of risky behavior.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    And if they think that this monitoring is going to help anything when people know about it, they need to learn about Goodharts' Law:

    When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure

    As soon as this becomes a thing people will get anxious and petty about it, and they will start trying to game the system, and that system gaming will take some portion of their focus away from driving and guess what, that's going to make them worse drivers.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I drive my car like I stole it. I will continue to drive my car and beat on it like it owes me money. I will never put a dongle in my obd2 port from my insurance company. I will never have any stupid app I don't need on my phone and my car is no longer hooked up to onstar. Fuck that. You put that shit in your car, you will never see lower rates, you'll just see smarter advertising. However, if you drive like me, I'm sure they'll charge you more or drop you.

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    [–] 76 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If only we had lawmakers that kept greedy corporations in check, instead of bickering over bullshit.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago

    Lawmakers seem to have developed a strangely keen interest in where exactly we put our dicks and the very personal repercussions of any new genetic material created from any of this dick placement. They don't seem to have any time at all for corporate abuse of the populous at large. I guess the problem perhaps is that while corporations are people, they don't have dicks?

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  • [–] 56 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Our insurance company offered a rate reduction if we installed a device on the cars to monitor how we drove. It we met whatever metric they set we’d get a discount for “safe driving”.

    Hell no. I’m paying full price to not have them looking over my shoulder while driving.

    Because you know that the data will be sold, or even used to classify your risk as a driver and potentially raise your rates. There’s nothing altruistic about these companies.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    To anyone who doesn't believe you and thinks they might actually he able to get better rates through an app like that...

    You know how health insurance companies charge hefty premiums with ridiculously high copays, but you figure "If I really need something covered, though, they'll pay it and I won't go bankrupt", but yet they still find a way to have so few scruples that they'll fight you on the services you have them billed for because they are a corporation beholden to shareholders and will do everything in their power to hang onto every single dollar possible?

    Your car insurance is provided by a corporation.

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  • I tried it once. Installed the app on my phone. The error rate in the data they collected was ridiculously high. Get a phone call while driving? Welp, now it says you were on the phone for 45 seconds. Playing music through the stereo? No, you were clearly using your phone the entire time. Phone slides around on the console? You clearly must have mashed the brakes.

    I decided that the best way for them to determine I was a safe driver was the fact that I haven't had an accident claim in years.

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    [–] 45 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The article photo looks like these three women have slowed down to get a good look at me as I struggle to keep my food away from three hungry raccoons in my underwear (me in my underwear, not the raccoons) on my front lawn next to a bouncy castle the raccoons have all but taken over at this point.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Honestly at that point how much can you guarantee that none of those raccoons has been inside your underwear, at least partially with a claw or something?

    At the rate things are going they probably will take your underwear as well.

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    infos & some criticism of the app :
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life360
    (also some cars have integrated tracking)

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    (also some cars have integrated tracking)

    Pretty much every single car made in the last 5 years has it. And it's been in cars starting in the 90s so just because your car is a 2015 doesn't mean it's safe.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    Every car. Not pretty much every one, but every one. Telemetry boxes have been around for a while and you can even get Telemetry Insurance if you have one. I think by 2015 all manufacturers had them.

    Edit: I want to also state this is for the US. Other nations are also doing this, but may not be there yet.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Secretly? Doubt it. Some are even loudly proud of doing it in the name of "saving you money". Long as its out in the open, ok. Do they tap into google drive and waze data though?

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago

    I just want to be able to corner hard and accelerate hard and do some spirited driving in a safe area without that info getting sold to insurance companies…

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    "but I don't need privacy, I don't have anything to hide!"

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (11 children)

    Nope, because I drive an 03 Jetta lol

    Edit: I’m also quite selective about the stuff I install on my phone, and nothing has “always on” location data.

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    [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    My driving is being non-secretly scored, I have an app just for that. Currently it just complains that I have power saving mode on all the time, so I don't know if it's not working or if it is and I just can't see the results anymore. (I'm not turning off power saving mode.)

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    Does it actually tell you the results? I'm curious how they score your driving, and how effective it is. The scariest things I see on the road are things like:

    • distracted driving
    • tailgating
    • lack of awareness

    I don't see how they'd measure how safe a driver you are.

    Perhaps it's just that people are more careful when they know they're being monitored, and safe drivers are more likely to opt in?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    For each trip it tells you things like how often you touch your phone, what % of the trip you spent using your phone, and how many times you braked hard (which is a proxy for things like tailgating or general inattentiveness, since it can't see the road). Mostly it seems to be a "don't use your phone" score. There's an overall score, and you can see how big your discount is, but the score itself is largely meaningless without the ability to compare to other drivers.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Tailgating is actually pretty easy to measure - there are specific patterns of braking and acceleration.

    Innatention may be measurable too. For example, if an inattentive driver frequently drifts from the center of the lane and makes small quick corrections periodically, that would be apparent from accelerometer data.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Why do you have an app for that?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I'm inclined to think this should be illegal because it could lead to a situation where insurance is unavailable to or unaffordable for anyone who doesn't opt in to fairly invasive tracking.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    It is kinda like that. We have a tracker that we added because they increased the insurance rate and said if you install this device we'll keep the rate low based on driving patterns.

    Basically records how often you drive, hard break/sharp turns, after midnight drives, etc. We don't drive the car often so the prob of accident is low but we recently learned that they can consider not driving enough also bad saying it can make you drive recklessly or sth.

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