My auto insurance agent has offered me discounts if I install an app that monitors when I pick up my phone, or brake suddenly, or speed or ?????? It seems really like spying on me and it probably monitors my location too. I'm really leery about doing this just to get a discount. I have a good driving record with no accidents. Isn't that enough?


Anyone have stories pro and con regarding this device?

They can save you money. Yes it's spying on you. It will be built into cars automatically in 10 to 15 years IMHO as part of v2v and e2e communucations and safety standards.

You might try it for a short term to see how much it will save you. In the end it comes down to how much is your privacy worth to you. Maybe they will save you enough.

Do you carry a smart phone? You're already giving away this data with no savings to you. Unless you're a hard core privacy nerd and disable everything.

I would find an insurance company that would give me a good rate without spying on me.

I do have excellent rates. I shopped around for rates and coverages that we needed.

Dogblogger-could you explain how I am giving away this information already merely by having a smart phone? I know websites I visit target me for ads.

This is all about GPS and the accelerometer. Many apps like location info the GPS provides, but mapping apps use this for traffic congestion and speed calculation. The accelerometer will report your start and stop acceleration levels. Hard stops and starts and hard turns will make for high insurance rates. They also use your speed by location to calculate if you follow the posted speeds.

The ads are part of it that data can be stolen or subpoenaed too. But the police also query the cell providers for phones connected to particular cell towers at the time of a crime to build a suspect pool. Until the last few weeks, this did not require a warrant. Similarly you can be collected by stingray type surveillance without a warrant.

Just like license plate scanners, the resulting database builds a profile of where you tend to be at particular times. Which is sensitive info if for example, you discretely visit a doctor for treatment or testing, or a sex partner, or giving up where your kids go to school.

At least with the app, you're getting some direct benefit from this data collection.

I hope you understand that the only people who should volunteer for monitored driving are those drivers at whom the rest of us yell and gesticulate to move the hell out of our way!!

My rates would sky-rocket if they knew how I drive.

It's good to be the second fastest car on the freeway.

Indeed.
I always refer to the fastest one as the "minesweeper" :)

Yep. I owned a car without a working speedometer. I would wait until a car flew by me, and then follow about 1/2 mile behind. If I saw the brake lights come on I slowed down. I never got a ticket and made good time.

IMO: bad idea. It penalizes you for stopping quickly. And why do you stop quickly? To avoid smashing into somebody else, whose driving habits you have no control over. So you get penalized for the mistakes of others. And the insurance company sounds so progressive.Literally, you would be better off financially for rolling through a stop light as long as you don't get hit. I'm not a fan.

They don't charge less for safe drivers. They get to charge more for "unsafe" drivers. There's a difference.

Exactly, it's a measure of the number of unsafe drivers around you in traffic, and how slowly you decelerate in response to their unpredictable movements. The best way to avoid an accident was to remove the device from my car and quit thinking I need to decelerate more slowly to be a better driver. That Progressive device causes accidents for those who are foolish enough (like you and I) to plug it in and think it'll provide some reward because we are safe drivers. It's like the church. Instead of turning good people in to bad people, it turns good drivers in to bad drivers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2018 10:35AM by azsteve.

It's only a matter of time before the app's data is accessible to various government agencies, including law enforcement. Arguments to advance this will be made in terms of "fairness" and "safety." Like under-the-skin chip implants (growing in popularity in Sweeden), volunteers will be the point of the spear on this invasive (pun intended) technology. Eventually, it will be imposed widely, and eventually universally.

I'm a pessimist. I see this as inevitable. At 71, it won't affect me, but I worry about my children, grandchildren, and my country. I hasten to point out that intimate government-corporate cooperation and control is a foundational part of fascism: Corporations advance their interests by being agents of the government.

The app in question is called "Snapshot," and the company promoting it is Progressive. Take careful note of the name, "Progressive." Anything but!

Don't do it. I tried this and the thing drove me nuts. If you drive like granny and turn REAL slow and break WAY soon and start off VERY slow. You might get by. This of course want stop people from running in back of you or shooting you the bird all day long. People will be crawling your ass at every stop and start. Staying within the parameters of those damn thing's will cause a wreck, not prevent one.
And in the end what would you save? A few dollars at the lost of your sanity.

pathfinder Wrote:


> This of course want stop people from
> running in back of you or shooting you the bird
> all day long. People will be crawling your ass at
> every stop and start.


So. . . you live near elderolddog?

I NEVER shot the bird! There are too many armed maniacs on SoCal freeways.

And I smile while directing the vilest possible imprecations at the aged As--- fe----- whom fate puts twixt me and my exit.

Seriously, you just never know who's armed and looking to redeem a failed self-image.

an "I'll pray for you" head bow while she cursed them under her breath. I try to think that way now.

Another analogy I use while driving is Chuang Tsu's empty boat.

http://www.thedailyzen.org/2015/05/27/the-empty-boat-by-chuang-tzu/

I'm still working on my boat but when I empty the other drivers' boats I don't react to them as people trying to kill me, but merely empty boats drifting around on the freeway. Saves on my adrenal system. Ah, So. Cal driving...

NO

The insurance company mentioned in a few of the responses is not who I am with. I have been told that "all" the car insurers are going to start offering this, so more and more of you might be getting calls and emails from your agents.

I will be responding to my agent with a polite, "no thanks". You all have convinced me that it is really a slippery slope in many ways.

See, RfM has so MANY smart people!

May their dark soul be covered with black mold and, especially, their obnoxious spokespersonwomanidiot, "Flo." Egad, I detest their ads.

My car = zero to sixty eventually. I should get really good rates.

No. Maintain what little privacy you can. It's a luxury worth paying for.

I think insurance companies would gladly use genetic information to know who to deny or charge more for health insurance if given half a chance.

I think insurance companies will do anything they can get away with if they can use personal information.

I'm over people using my personal information to make money off me. Giving you lower rates for spying on you is making them a lot more money than they are going to pay you.

The current climate is to favor corporations over individuals as if our only purpose is for corporations to manipulate us.

I think my generation will be the last to know what it was like to expect and have complete privacy.

thank you dagny....that sums it up perfectly for me! I am just saying NO to the spy app.

Hell, no, don't even think about it!

They can do what they want and so will I-am.

I'd put that app down for a nap [an app].

Corporations are greedy bastards, institutionalized. Yeah, it sounds like a discount but ultimately it will become a penalty (if it isn’t already incorporated into the premium) if you don’t agree to allow them to spy on you. I say NO! On principle. Although it depends on the discount.

it sounds like you will be penalyzed for avoiding car accidents on highways (when drivers pull un signaled quickly in lanes in front of you as you drive, and very quick cars which drive twenty plus miles faster than everybody else 'weave' through the traffic)

I do not know if these 20-25 miles per hour faster than surrounding traffic drivers cause 'hit and runs' nor do I know why and how they aim between moving vehicles or imagine they fit in the spaces between the rest of us on the highway.

But what I do know is, staying in an outside lane where there is a margin ( not a hill side, steep drop off, concrete abutment, yes is safer for there is an 'emergency turn off' rather than attempting neither to swerve, change lanes abruptly, nor hard brake at freeway speeds)--- these are not things the AP can see.

the app cannot see the 20 - 30 mph above highway speed cars weaving in between the rest of us - driving with steady hands and steady nerves as these fools weave between us.

one time far ago, back into a summer past, hundreds of motor cycles wove ribbons around the lanes of cars driving south on CA 99. Riders wore colors on their sleeves as lights streamed by it looked neon in a Vegas display. The sound pounded on the street overwhelmed the bass speakers music in the car. it went on and on only hands gripping the wheel never missing a beat never slowing down nor changing lane let the riders spin their magic around us as we drove south into the night.

hard stops huh, penalyzed for hard stops. Something's not right with this. it reminds me of being penalyzed for telling the truth in a mormon bishops interview and being told to go back home, pay more tithing, get back on your knees and pray more again after somebody hurt you and you wanted to argue back but they said forgive seventy times seven instead. hard stops huh, you, punished, driving highways, for hitting your brakes/ hmmm. Sounds familiar. haunting to find it on an ex mormon board where echos of being penalyzed and blamed for responding to life's unfairness in an unvictimized way always blamed. & that's the way it is with some people, they profit unfairly from victims and request that we live their suggestions which place us in harms way, punish us for avoiding danger (thanks bishop) (That's the way it is in the mormon church) . Hmmmm higher insurance rates through APP for avoiding car accidents on the high way huh as measured through hard braking. WOW

when you are driving exactly as fast as all surrounding highway traffic, in all 3 or 4 lanes going in the same direction-
matching the speed of the traffic in your lane and surrounding lanes to fit in and move cooperatively down the road together-

there are these outlyers who weave flashing a blurr between lanes somewhat angularly like driving in diamonds in vertical horizonal weave through imagined empty spaces they project might occur in the traffic ahead of them.

if the speed limit was 65 and traffic was 70, these blurs weaving through the fully packed lanes of traffic that extend visually across the road like a band marching in close ranks four deep as far forward as the eye can see to the horizon on the highway,
then the blurs of speed weaving between the cars jockying for position to exit the freeway make their turns would be driving far far far faster than the thousands of cars on the road together.

its not one person chaning lanes that's doing this its a life style. I saw a younger female in a bouncy curved rounded low profile wide body car passing using road edges, as they made their diagonal lines far above the traffic speed they utilized passing to the right near the dirt at the highway's edge, and wove even passing when there was no lane on the left outside the left lane, in a radical random blur going phenomally and notably through my life one thursday several years ago.

when the highway passed the phenomenal sky divers parasailing in their grand way floating to the left of the sky above the highway as they usually were when we were lucky to see something beautiful beyond the oleander divider, this lady speedster got caught in her trance trapped envision clouded
trapped in the trance of her sports cars dance off target, for just a moment. Smashing into traffic trucks and cars suburbans caravanning vans careening tottering toyotas end on end rolling black rounded speedster banging into a flat blot battered it came to a stop at a concrete flabby aluminum rail in the torn oleaners in front of me.

the traffic came to a stop highway patrol abulances riding the rail outside the road bumper to bumper inching mincing merging around the tragedy as dancing legs parachutes multi color stripes floating slowly down paraded through the cloudless sky.
it was a drought. There were no clouds.

I-15 in Lake Elsinore...

I wouldn't do it. It only gives them a reason to deny a claim OR raise your rates...and I can't imagine that the discount is going to be very big.

Plus does the monitoring interfere with other equipment (computer, sensors, etc.) on the vehicle? Who knows.

Do they sell the information to anyone? One car dealership I was going to get a car from a few months ago had installed something like that on ALL their cars. And added $1,000 to the price of the car. They said it was a great way to track the car if it was stolen...but also a great way to send me updates about "time to change your oil" and is seen by the industry as a way to increase revenue. I told them the only way I would buy a car is if they took it off and eliminated the charge. They wouldn't so I bought the same vehicle at another dealership.

Drive an 05 VW wagon (still) that records brake pressure, swerving, sudden stops and impact. It's called an EDR, Event Data Recorder. It's in most cars today.
Your insurance company doesn't need to offer you any gadget to get basic info from your car if you are involved in an accident.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2018 10:21PM by verdacht.

This is true, but at the present, no matter what holy hell my EDR records (I wonder if we're related?) regarding how I drive, I still pay my good driver rates. And the ones who decipher the content of the EDR are the cops, not my insurance carrier, so as long as I'm not the 'at fault' driver in the accident, I'm not worried about my EDR. (Cousins! I bet we're cousins!)

I tried progressive's opt-in program to let them spy on you and installed the device under my dash. I quit the program after three months. Here is why. You get penalized for a combination of hard stops, both the number of hard stops, and how hard any one quick stop was. But anything other than a very slow and very gradual slow down over an unreasonable distance is considered a hard slowdown or hard stop. On a good day with only a few events, I would log in to Progressive's website and could see only three to five events, each unavoidable and each of which I could remember when it happened "oh shoot, that one is going to show up tonight", and it did. When someone cuts you off and you quickly slow down, you get ding'd with a very hard stop or slowdown. When a considerate driver moves in front of you and you slow down to let him in safely, that's a hard stop too unless you had a few hundred feet to very gradually slow down because he is far ahead of you. So I drove unreasonably carefully, determined to get good scores. I found that I could get better scores if my gradual stops ended within inches of the bumper of the car ahead of me (this is more gradual but unsafe). Finally, I concluded that the progressive device measures not how safe of a driver you are, but how heavy traffic is during your rush hour drive, and how willing you are to risk your safety with more gradual slowdowns and stops in that fast-paced environment. If I lived on a farm and traversed twenty miles on an empty road to work, I could have gotten good scores. In rush hour traffic, I had little influence in my scores but could get slight improvements if I drove unsafely, risking an accident with every gradual slowdown or stop when a safe and careful driver should decelerate much more quickly.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2018 10:21AM by azsteve.

That is very telling, Steve. A so called safety device can actually be causing unsafe behavior.