Now insurer's want to

[Racket_Man]

put data collection devices in your HOME.

http://money.msn.com/insurance/insur...ass-into-homes

Yes I know there is some good reasons for doing so such as with after disaster (ie. tornados, hurricanes, floods, wind storms, etc.) but how far are we as the comsumer willing to go?????

The recent history of insurers' use of data mining indicates that insurers are using these new technologies to simply exclude certain risk exposure," says Birnbaum. In simple terms: If the insurer detects high winds around your house, it might cancel the policy.

Robert Hunter, the director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, is also suspicious. "Insurers have been using more and more black boxes [technology which is only understood by insurers] to systematically underpay claims," he says.

and the car inusrance companies giving a discount for installing a tracking device.

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Oh great - another one intruding into our lives. I once had an auto insurer who gave me a discount for putting a spy device in my car. Well, I'm no careless driver, but I got sick of their emails telling me where I went, what my speed was, etc. Enough is enough. I value my privacy and it's slipping away all the time, which I really resent.

The car one would not fly with me as I am a delivery driver and all I do is stop and go driving.

[HYHYBT]

The only car one I've seen doesn't track where you go; it only records things like speed, acceleration, and maybe braking. That tells a lot about *how* you drive without spying on where you've been.

[Panacea]

No way am I putting one of those devices in my car. The issue I have is there is no context to the data; some data can be misconstrued.

Insurance companies are not your friends. They exist to make money by minimizing risk: their risk, not yours. This is just way too open to abuse.

[TheHuckster]

The only car one I've seen doesn't track where you go; it only records things like speed, acceleration, and maybe braking. That tells a lot about *how* you drive without spying on where you've been.

Those statistics mean jack shit if you don't have any kind of context.

If I told you I averaged 25 miles per hour on the Interstate, you'd think I was some moron who is a danger on the road. But what if I told you my commute was at 8:30 in the morning into the city, where I'm in stop-and-go traffic?

65 miles per hour sounds reasonably safe, until you find that I'm driving on bald tires in the snow without my seatbelt on.

Did the device just record a sudden swerve to the left? Man, I must be a bad driver, then, huh? Too bad they don't know I had to swerve to avoid a maniac who just cut me off without warning from the right.

There's no way to tell how unsafe a driver is just by looking at raw numbers about speed and acceleration. Yes, perhaps if you're averaging 90 mph and being a complete idiot, but that's one of dozens of ways to be a bad driver. Running stop signs, red lights, ignoring crosswalks, driving on bad tires, tailgating, driving on the shoulder, and driving too slow on the fast lane are all bad driving habits that a lot of people have who aren't otherwise habitual speeders.

[HYHYBT]

Yes, there's a lot you could do that's unsafe it wouldn't pick up. (And I don't think it would detect a swerve, either. It only knows what the car's computer knows.)

But what it does pick up, *taken as a whole,* can still say something useful. A single incident is meaningless, but patterns are significant. Slamming on your brakes once means someone cut you off; doing the same routinely means either you're not paying attention or you're driving aggressively. The same with acceleration. And even if it is because someone cut you off, if your normal driving involves a lot of that happening, you're going to be a worse insurance risk than if you drive in an environment where that's rare.

[Andara Bledin]

A swerve would be picked up by most black boxes for the same reason your seatbelt would hold fast - there are mercury switches set to detect beyond a certain threshold of both pitch and yaw.

I, personally, want a camera in my car that will pick up on these events and store the time leading up and out of them. I tend to think of myself as a good driver and will own up to the shit I've done that was wrong, but there are a lot of times I've been in near accidents because of other people behaving badly and some of those times would have resulted in me looking like the one at fault.

[bara]

~shudders~

I was on my way to moms house with breakfast (a surprise for her) and I was in the turn lane set to turn left when this lady started veering towards me from the other direction. Thankfully, she looked up and realized it and corrected. I was able to see her put the cellphone to her ear as she corrected her driving.