Internet-Connected Vehicles & Surveillance: It's a Trip
Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies: Report
If one’s aim is to detail the specificifications of our culture’s world-wide surveillance apparatus, then it is accurate to say that the job can scarcely be completed.
This is so because there are no shortages of revelations in this area of concern.
And one thing worth speaking of is how drivers of internet-connected motor vehicles can be subject to having their data apprehended.
Naturally, what I am about to say is nothing novel, for there have been those who have talked at length about such matters for decades, though few seem to have heeded their words of caution.
Yet great in number are the ways in which one can be surveilled while traveling on the road, or when utilizing more modern models of motor vehicles.
For example, it should be easy for most to discern that, while motorists of newer cars operate their vehicle, it is embedded with a sophisticated GPS tracking system. And should one seek, for whatever reason, to remove the tech from their vehicle, it is well to understand that there are still other computer chips present that consistently ping off cell towers which, in turn, can divulge a driver’s rough location in order to track where they go and what they do.
Another way in which drivers can be monitored is through a smartphone app or physical telematics device, also called a dongle, that can be installed or plugged into a vehicle, the purpose of which is to collect data about driving habits in order to adjust insurance premiums or offer discounts.
According to an article from the electric vehicle website InsideEvs, “Remember when those tiny dongles that your insurance company offered to potentially lower your insurance rates came out? Insurers spun a wonderful tale: simply plug into your car's OBDII port and record telematics data, ship (or in today's case, beam) it back to the mothership, and then they could potentially lower your premium based on this data. It turned out that wasn't always the case, and some individuals quickly found out that their premiums jumped due to their driving behavior.”
As explained in a piece from The Autopian, “Cars – well, modern, internet-connected cars – are already known to be some of the worst offenders of not respecting your privacy of almost any product out there. Hell, remember when we learned that Kia and Nissan reserved the right to learn about the ‘sexual activity’ of their customers? It’s bad! It’s safest to just assume modern, connected cars will be gathering and selling as much data as they legally can. At the moment, that doesn’t seem to include specific location data, but it does include the number of trips driven, how long they last, when they occurred, and so much more. The realization that this information is going to insurance companies to rat you out is depressing but expected. It’s not even particularly secret, once you start looking.”
Still, in the face of the many challenges posed to personal privacy via motor vehicle technology, I think it not unreasonable to purport that the vast majority in culture are quick to equate a higher degree of technology with a superior quality of vehicle, in addition to it being tantamount to a more pleasant and efficient driving experience.
The fact that up-to-date technology in newer iterations of motor vehicles helps to surveils users’ movements, that it can gift its user less freedom, that it can make it more difficult to administer repairs, that it can promote driver distraction behind the wheel, that it can heighten one’s risk of death, that it remakes the driving experience into something divergent from what it once was, and that it can transmit consequences not typically considered beforehand, are all slants still seemingly unworthy of being contemplated in culture.
Indeed, for many still maintain that the most important thing to be considered is the amount of technology that can be integrated into current models of motor vehicles.
These people would have us believe that the worthiness of a motor vehicle lies solely in its degree of technological sophistication.
But in a culture that assigns less significance in thoughtful discussions but instead cherishes the continuity of comedic entertainment above all else, it is no mistake to say that technology, if I may put it this way, will always have the last laugh.
My hope is that presenting some information can be useful in demonstrating ways in which culture might come to be ill-treated by their high-tech motor vehicles.
One report published earlier this month from The New York Times is illustrative of this point.
One man, Kenn Dahl, who leased a Chevrolet Bolt, observed for himself the oddity of the cost of his car insurance increasing by twenty-one percent in 2022. Dahl maintained that he has always been a careful driver, and that he has never been responsible for an accident.
While quotes from insurance companies were high, one insurance agent, according to The New York Times, said that Dahl’s LexisNexis report played a role in his sobering experience.
“LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a ‘Risk Solutions’ division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets . . . What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car. On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking. According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors — the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score ‘for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage,’ according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month. ‘It felt like a betrayal,’ Mr. Dahl said. ‘They’re taking information that I didn’t realize was going to be shared and screwing with our insurance.’”
Ford Motor, in a patent application, succinctly described what is happening: “Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry [italics mine].”
The article goes on to say, “Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people’s driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis. Automakers and data brokers that have partnered to collect detailed driving data from millions of Americans say they have drivers’ permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read.”
The Times continues: “Especially troubling is that some drivers with vehicles made by G.M. say they were tracked even when they did not turn on the feature — called OnStar Smart Driver — and that their insurance rates went up as a result . . . Even for those who opt in, the risks are far from clear. I have a G.M. car, a Chevrolet. I went through the enrollment process for Smart Driver; there was no warning or prominent disclosure that any third party would get access to my driving data.”
The publication adds that, “Mr. Dahl shared his experience on an online forum for Chevy Bolt enthusiasts, on a thread where other people expressed shock to find that LexisNexis had their driving data. Warnings about the tracking are scattered across online discussion boards dedicated to vehicles manufactured by G.M. — including Corvettes, a sports car designed for racking up ‘acceleration events.’ (One driver lamented having data collected during a ‘track day,’ while testing out the Corvette’s limits on a professional racetrack.) Numerous people on the forums complained about spiking premiums as a result. A Cadillac driver in Palm Beach County, Fla., who asked not to be named because he is considering a lawsuit against G.M., said he was denied auto insurance by seven companies in December. When he asked an agent why, she advised him to pull his LexisNexis report. He discovered six months of his driving activity, including many instances of hard braking and hard accelerating, as well as some speeding . . . When he finally obtained car insurance, through a private broker, it was double what he had previously been paying.”
I have heard one person liken this trend to an electronic Berlin Wall of control, simply the latest piece of the digital oversight machine dispatched to keep tabs on the movements of the general public.
But there are other factors attached to the subject of watching motorists that are worth examining.
In referencing the insurance tracking devices that companies have, in the past, attempted to convince users to adopt in order to secure better premiums, it is interesting to observe that the odds are against those who might utilize them in an effort to acquire these kind of rates.
Let us say that a user begins at one of the best grades companies usually offer new users in order to get them to sign up with the telematics device. The point of utilizing the dongle, as I understand it, is to get people to use it in the hope of acquiring a better rate.
But in the case of insurance tracking devices or the formation of one’s LexisNexis report through internet-connected vehicles sending drivers’ information to insurance companies, the design is still the same: as a result of the technology, or so the thinking goes, a user is not proving that they deserve a higher score, but are, in effect, trying to prevent a lower one.
As we know, in both cases the recording and accumulation of every hard break, acceleration, mile traveled, frequency of travel and a litany of other factors drops that score by increments.
The cumulative effect is not a user proving they deserve the safe driving high score (which, to keep long term, is thought to be a statistical improbability). The upshot is that, through the technology, a user unintentionally comes to prove that they “deserve” an increase in their insurance payments by way of providing their own driving data.
Indeed, for it is true that no one who has ever lived has driven perfectly, and so it is fair to assume it unlikely for one to be gifted a discount for willingly submitting their driving habits.
What kind of response can we expect from culture after hearing of this news?
We might, for one, anticipate the technophile to either be rattled out of his tech-induced daze or participate in the longstanding American tradition of simply nodding along in agreement.
Or, some might simply be expected to recycle the habitual and tiresome talking point, “Well, if you don’t have anything to hide…”
Or, a thinking mind might inquire, How do insurance companies and vehicle manufacturers go about differentiating between the car’s owner and insurance holder behind the wheel at a certain time and simply a friend who ends up borrowing the vehicle?
But also speaking volumes here is the phenomenon of car manufacturers increasing their MSRPs by promoting the features of 0-60 miles-per-hour capabilities, performance packages with tuned brakes and suspensions, and cars rocketing down curvy roads in commercials, to only then collaborate with insurance companies in order to, through technology, incentivize drivers to subtly tattle on themselves, who’s sole infraction is driving their vehicles in the exact way they are promoted, marketed and depicted in advertisements.
And still, there are other clear shortcomings of this privacy-violating technology being embedded in modern vehicles.
“There’s all sorts of troubling implications about this,” continues the article from The Autopian, “but I think one of the least discussed ones is that the data being gathered really doesn’t make sense as the basis of deciding whether or not a particular driver is ‘safe’ or not, and really shouldn’t be used to adjust a driver’s insurance premiums . . . Long before the NYT article came out, owners had been noticing that their data was being tracked, sometimes alerted to this fact if they happen to live in a state with laws that require notification if certain data-tracking criteria are met.”
The automotive website also details that, “There are so many problems with all of this, from data privacy to consumer rights and so on, but it’s also worth noting that the metrics used here really have nothing to do with whether a driver is safe or not,” adding that it is a “horrible way to measure a safe driver because it’s a set of criteria completely removed from the environment and situation that the car is actually being driven in. Take the ‘hard braking’ metric, for example. It’s treated as a negative, with scores lowering if you have a lot of hard braking incidents. But there are absolutely times while driving where you want to brake, and brake hard. If a kid or deer or a kid on a deer or dog or tortoise or whatever bolts out unexpectedly in front of you, a safe driver will apply their brakes, hard. Soft, gradual braking is not safe in such a situation, but the data gathering does not appear to take the overall situation into account.”
The article goes on to say that, “Same goes for hard acceleration; there are times when the safe thing to do is to get out of the way of something, fast, and that means accelerating hard. Sometimes you need to merge from a short on-ramp onto a fast moving highway – I remember sections of the 134 and 2 highways around Pasadena, California being like that – and if you didn’t accelerate quickly, you’d be putting yourself and cars behind you in some genuine peril. And don’t get me started on the ‘Late Night Driving’ metric; some people work night shifts! Perhaps statistically there’s more wrecks in those hours, but there are also plenty of valid and safe reasons to drive whenever the hell you want. Even average speed is deceptive; if most of your driving is on large, open highways with a speed limit of 70+, should you be penalized for having a high average speed?”
The website further notes that, “Fundamentally, the issue here is that these sort of driving scores attempt to make people drive to satisfy a set of criteria that has nothing to do with the actual driving situation the driver is in. You should drive based on what is happening immediately around your car. If you can drive slowly and gently, wonderful, but if you need to react quickly to a situation around your car, the safe thing is to do just that, arbitrary driving scores on your phone be damned. The truth is that none of this driving score bull**** is for the benefit of the driver. Even if they displayed the driving score in real time on your dash so you can work to maximize it, that wouldn’t really help, because the ‘score’ is meaningless. The data that gets sent, sneakily, from your car to your insurance provider is not really there to help you. It’s there because it may help the insurance company make money, and we all know that.”
Of course, those who elect to reference such matters can also reasonably expect to be branded a “conspiracy theorist,” in spite of federal law permitting these kind of practices.
To be true, it may be a situation analogous to the “conspiracy theorists” who, decades ago, sounded the alarm over the coming age of computer and cellular technology helping to enable and establish the tracking and mass-surveillance of the general public.
Naturally, we know now that those individuals were not “conspiracy theorists,” but were, instead, those who could see clearly the ways in which technology tenders consequences to culture.
As for solutions to the problem, clear answers can be hard to drive home.
After of hearing of this, some, and understandably so, may be reluctant to replace their older vehicles.
And then there are those who are forecasting a coming mass-transition and adoption of motor vehicles made in the 1990s or early 2000s, before surveilling and monetizing motorists displaced driving safely as an utmost concern of vehicle manufacturers and insurance companies.
Others are predicting a wave of class-action lawsuits from drivers disillusioned with how their personal data is being manipulated in ways they had not completely understood.
Or, in a clear-headed culture, perhaps the inception of comprehensive data privacy laws that might protect the privacy of the people may one day come to pass.
But it is also well to expect those who will choose to celebrate this dismantlement of their privacy and the apprehension of their digital data points through technology.
As long as these individuals, from their point of view, have access to Bluetooth, or their oversized dashboard-mounted digital screen, or their USB ports, or their rearview cameras, or their overpowered LED lights or their many other specialized technologies when behind the wheel, then all is well.
But these people now also have access to a great truth, and one that is worth remembering: that alongside internet-connected vehicles will always be technology-connected consequences.