Want low premiums? Let insurers 'drive' with you

Want low premiums? Let insurers 'drive' with you

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2011-08-18-car-insurance-drivers-tracking_n.htm


How would you like your insurance company to monitor your driving every moment you're behind the wheel? It's already happening. Insurers are offering potential discounts to people who voluntarily install a device that tracks how their car is driven and streams the data back to the company. By matching a "good driver" profile, participants can reduce their insurance premiums by 10%-50%.


Progressive Insurance
'Snapshot': Progressive requires drivers to keep a monitoring device plugged into their cars for no more than six months.
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Progressive Insurance
'Snapshot': Progressive requires drivers to keep a monitoring device plugged into their cars for no more than six months.
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ANOTHER VIEW: Steer clear of cars that spy
The plan brings two words to mind, but neither of them is "great deal." Intrusive is one. Inevitable is the other.
Intrusive because many Americans still think of their cars as one of the last places they can go that's truly private. Sure, there are red-light cameras, speed cameras, police and other drivers who can see you when you're on the road. But for the most part, you're just another anonymous driver. The new technology can keep you (or whoever driving your car) under continuous surveillance, measuring the way you make left turns, drive at night, stomp on the brakes, or step on the gas — all factors that can affect the odds for accidents.
Traditionally, insurers set rates by fitting drivers into broad categories — age, gender, residence, history of accidents or tickets and so on. But learning how an individual actually drives lets companies fine-tune a driver's risk profile and charge accordingly, the same way financial companies use a detailed credit score to set loan rates.
How much companies want to know varies. Progressive offers a "Snapshot" program that requires drivers to keep a monitoring device plugged into their cars for no more than six months. The device measures how much you drive, when you drive (accidents peak between midnight and 4 a.m.) and how much and how heavily you hit the brakes.
By contrast, State Farm's more intrusive "Drive Safe and Save with In-Drive" program requires that the device stay in your car as long as you want the discount. It measures the same things Progressive does, but adds left and right turns, quick acceleration and speed (over 80 mph is a no-no). It also has an option that tracks your vehicle, but says it doesn't base discounts on where you drive.
USA TODAY OPINION

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No doubt, drivers who volunteer to be monitored tend to be better drivers, and drivers tend to drive more carefully when someone's watching. Monitoring will save lives.
That's great and, as long as monitoring is voluntary, it's no problem.
But there are reasons to believe things will evolve in a more troubling way. Most drivers probably don't know it, but millions of cars are already being "monitored" by manufacturer-installed "event data recorders" that function somewhat the way black boxes in airliners do. They typically record the last seconds before an accident, but they don't transmit data outside the car, and they're read only after an accident. What insurance companies want to do is more invasive, but financially seductive enough that it might be inevitable.
"It will be a 'choice,' but it will not be a choice," says Brian Sullivan, editor of Risk Information, which publishes newsletters for the insurance industry. Sullivan likens the monitoring devices to the club cards that give shoppers big discounts at grocery stores and drugstores in exchange for letting stores and marketers know exactly what products shoppers buy. Eventually, the cost of refusing to take the deal becomes so great that shoppers pay a significant penalty for retaining their privacy. So if you have a store's club card, the same logic might eventually persuade you to let the insurance company ride along as well.
Or insurers could demand installation of the devices.
Such fears aren't reason to prohibit the devices now. What happens later is another matter.