This is exactly what was predicted as the result of corporate surveillance and targeted ads. They are part of schemes to extract more revenue from you. Another example is the rising premium for health insurance. But people apparently had “nothing to hide”!
Ugh. That reminds me of a time probably around 2012. I was working for a pretty large company, and they had our health insurance provider come in. The insurance provider was offering $100 to any employees that came in and gave a sample of blood. This was not a blood drive, they wanted samples. There was a line going down the hallway of people excited to get a benjamin. I encouraged them to get off the line because they were just going to use the data from the blood tests to raise our rates. Everybody laughed at me.
Couple months later all of our insurance rates got jacked up. Like how did people not see what was going on? Did they really think the insurance company was there to give away free money and not somehow turn a profit? Fucking bananas.
Would anything have prevented an increase in rates? I’d bet if everyone got out of line, the rate increases would have been the same or higher. The only difference would be no one received $100.
100% against everything being monitored and data sold like it is…… but part of me wishes there was a way to work towards getting bad drivers off of the roads.
This is not the way to do that as the insurance companies only have one goal and that is to raise profits.
But when you stand on any random street corner and 30-60 % of every driver driving by is looking down at their cell phone, it is very scary.
People don’t use turn signals, speed through residential neighborhoods, change lanes in the middle of intersections, it’s insane. We need to make our world less car reliant, it’s unacceptable.
You get rid of cars and you stop designing society to accommodate the one edge case where someone lives 100miles away from a city that they have to commute by car to everyday for some reason.
Edge case
Thank you for your well educated and nuanced opinion that takes people who can’t afford to live in a city into account, very cool!
People can’t afford to live in the city precisely because so much of it is designed to cater to cars. For example, adding parking requirements to an apartment can easily increase the effective square footage by 50% (800 ft2 2-bedroom apartment + 2 parking spaces = 1200 ft2). Then the price goes up even more than that because parking deck is more expensive per unit area to construct than actual living space.
Me, with no bus with a route from my bumfuck nowhere town to my work a 20 minute backwoods drive in some equally Fuckwoods, Nowhere town:
Ever maybe think that maybe… JUST MAYBE!!! some people don’t actually want to live in a 10000 person/mile area and want a different life with trees or fields around them instead of more endless asphalt?
For those people, vehicles are the bridge between wanting to live around nature and not starving to death.
If you’re commuting from Bumfuck to Fuckwoods, you should drive*. Nobody cares! There are so few people like you that it doesn’t fucking matter what you do!
The issue is that people like you need to quit pretending your snowflake exceptions are an excuse to fail to solve the problem for the vast (80%!) majority of people who live in metro areas and are therefore not like you.
(* Actually you should just move to Fuckwoods, but that’s not the point.)
That’s not why most people drive cars. I’ve lived in cities with public transport all my life. But when I got my driving license, my life quality increased enormously. It’s like night and day. Not only can I drive where I want when I want, I can avoid other commuters that are very often loud or annoying. I don’t have to stand at bus stops or train stations and seeing them being delayed or canceled either.
I agree that some people drive poorly though. But the solution is to train them better, not to get rid of cars. You can hardly have an adult life with family without a car.
That sounds like a mix of public transportation sucking and people needing to travel too far to me
Driving sucks… But compared to not having a reliable way to get around? It’s total freedom
But better yet is being able to have a nice walk where you need to go, and frequent/plentiful options to go further. You just have to mix everything up and cut down on the parking lots. Low cost housing with full homes tucked here and there, smaller grocery and hardware stores every few blocks, gyms and parks a few blocks away - and all centered around a main street with offices and lower cost housing a few blocks away, so the main street can have a bus running by every 5 minutes
My time working in Paris for a bit really blew my mind - only one guy at my office wasn’t walking distance to work. I passed several grocery stores and bakeries on my 20 minute walk back if I wanted to grab something, there was a big park a couple blocks up if I wanted a scenic walk back.
And if I was feeling lazy, you could just start walking until you saw a bus coming up behind you - there was a bus stop like every quarter mile just going up and down that main street
Almost as good as all that is the fact that if you did have to drive, there was so much less traffic. You could park on side streets, but those spots were limited and needed specific permits. They had parking garages at the edge of the suburb area near the highway entrance and near the metro station, so while you could drive up to wherever to load/unload, it discouraged it and kept the cars mostly on the bigger roads in between areas.
Granted, it’s only amazing when the pieces all fit together like that - a lot of the designed communities in the US are nowhere close to as good because they don’t commit far with. I later moved to a designed community in the States which had most of the same aspects, but I never walked to the grocery store. It was across the street from the town center and a 10 minute walk, but it involved crossing 2 much higher speed/busy roads and walking across a huge parking lot. It was just a little island in a world still built for cars
But when it works, it’s amazing
Yeah it sounds extreamly unusual that people in Paris live so close to their home. But I think the French culture is about enjoying life as much as possible. They may choose a job nearby to avoid having to deal with shitty transports every day.
They may choose a job nearby to avoid having to deal with shitty transports every day.
It’s more just the option - a short commute is amazing. It makes an enormous difference in work and life satisfaction. They have the mixed zoning so you could find a cheap apartment or a three story house with a big yard without paying for it with 2 hours of your life every day
Their public transportation is great too… Even with a car, it’s just so much faster and more convenient most of the time. You just hop on and off with very little waiting. It’s cheap too, it was like 25 Euros a month for unlimited metro and bus rides, and even in the center of the city on a weekend it’s less crowded than DC is in the middle of a weekday
But I think the French culture is about enjoying life as much as possible.
This is just a tangent, but I don’t think that’s quite right… They actually say “c’est la vie” like they’re trying to convince themselves they can accept things
They have plenty of problems, there were two or three murders within my walking distance in a couple months… Not like it was an unsafe area, people just flipped out on family members and co-workers. One just (mostly) decapitated someone with a katana in an office over a fine or something. They’re constantly fighting over politics and culture, they share public spaces but you’ll see tons of people sitting alone carefully not interacting with each other - they’re very closed off in a lot of ways. Work-life balance is really what they’ve got going for them. That certainly leaves a lot more time for family and hobbies (which is huge), but I wouldn’t describe them as happy exactly… Some definitely do make the most of it, but a lot of people don’t
It’s more that they draw a very hard line between “acceptable” and “not acceptable”, but it’s a constant fight. They take their time eating good food and enjoy their outdoor time, but a lot of them are isolated and/or bitter. They’re going through the same stuff we are, but they’ve had more to lose
But that’s just my take away, and it’s not like I saw much of the county
I live 100 miles away because I never want to deal with city slickers like you.
So you don’t need society designed to accommodate your presence in a city, then?
So why drive into the city?
You will never be able to take away someone’s license for bad driving if doing so basically makes them unemployable and incapable of taking care of themselves. We need cheap, practical alternatives to cars in order to reduce the impact of bad drivers.
Yup. There’s a cause-and-effect chain that the anti-car crowd likes to ignore. The reality is that we need widely available alternative transport before restricting cars. If you start by restricting cars, all you’re doing is making it impossible for struggling people to get and keep a job. And that’s not good for anyone.
Give us cities that are walkable, with no point less than a 10 minute walk away from a train station.
Give us trains that are affordable and run regularly, not $10 per ride and only run every 45-60 minutes.
Give us actual separated sidewalks and prioritized pedestrian traffic, instead of roads without sidewalks and intersections that make pedestrians wait 2-4 cycles before giving them a crossing signal. Give us busses that actually run on time and run regularly.
Give us public transport that doesn’t shut down at 2AM, when all of the drunks are leaving the bars and are pushed into driving home because there is no public transport available after the bars close.
My daily commute by car is 13 minutes. Via public transport, it is nearly three hours. Without a car, I need to go 20 miles north to a connecting city, wait roughly hour for the next train, then go 20 miles south to get near my work. Then it’s another 20-30 minutes of waiting for the bus (if it’s even running on time) for another 5 miles. Or I can just fucking drive the 10 miles and be there in 13 minutes. No, I can’t walk because it’s nearly all highway driving and there are no sidewalks. No, I can’t ride a bike because no bikes are allowed on the highway.
Fix public transport. Make it usable. And then start restricting cars. If my commute was a 13 minute drive or a 15 minute train ride, I’d pick the train ride every time. But it’s not.
Obligatory US, I think the better way of filtering bad drivers is more stringent and frequent testing through the DMV (or your state’s equivalent). Look at Germany, they don’t mess around when it comes to licensing. I’m mid 30s, and haven’t had to retest or do any form of continuing driver’s education or retesting since I was 16.
It’s a little trickier here in the US due to our cities being built for cars, and being without one can be a huge detriment, especially with most public transit being a shitshow. But I agree, we definitely need some mechanisms to weed out bad drivers.
Well GM and Goodyear lobbied against public transit when they wanted everyone to buy a car, and probably still do , is why public transit is so awful.
That, plus GM literally bought up streetcar companies and shut them down or converted them to running buses.
Yes. The Great American Streetcar Scandal.
They were never really punished for this and I think this was a lesson learned by all that corps could do what they want without fear of repercussions.
That’s right.
Either way, the bottom line is that it’s pretty difficult to go without a car in the US outside select major cities. Still, per the original comment I responded to, something needs to give in regards to the excess amount of bad drivers on the roads here.
That seems like a bandaid for a tourniquet problem. We need to address causes, otherwise unlicensed, uninsured drivers will increase.
I agree, but you’re talking about completely reengineering/rebuilding cities. Doable in the long run, but clamping down on negligent and distracted drivers in the name of public safety can be done in a much quicker manner.
I think we could find viable ways to engineer something workable without completely tearing everything down, we just have to work smarter. And get rich people to pay taxes.
How do you propose policing all the drivers without license and insurance? We are already way overpoliced, with horrific results. How would you propose bad drivers get to work and do necessary living activities? I think we need to look for inclusive, compassionate solutions, rather than more punitive, exclusionary solutions.
While licensing is definitely harder in Germany you also do not have to retest or do anything else to keep your license. It’s actually a problem that it’s pretty hard to take away the license from old unfit people (and the German government actually blocked EU legislation improving that).
Reliable public transport with a robust interstate passenger railway system coupled with a well designed intracity bus system, along with well maintained biking paths everywhere else would go a long way to getting bad drivers off the road.
We can’t get bad drivers off the road when basic everyday living requires driving. There are cost effective alternatives in use across the world. America just has to learn to accept good ideas that others have pioneered.
Trollies?
I respect boxcars, but does the world need more trolls and troll accessories?
but part of me wishes there was a way to work towards getting bad drivers off of the roads.
More stringent requirements for drivers license? Actually punishing people for texting and driving?
Culturally you can help too. I personally lay on the horn when someone is texting and driving.
part of me wishes there was a way to work towards getting bad drivers off of the roads.
There is: it’s called zoning reform.
I have seen some cool videos about this, although they are kind of boring I guess…. Using infrastructure to bring the speed limit down naturally and force drivers to keep their hands on the wheel
Traffic calming is a thing, but not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about repealing zoning restrictions in order to allow traditional development again, which (since property owners aren’t forced by law to cater to cars), tends to have walkable density that discourages driving.
In other words, you don’t have to worry about bad drivers if almost nobody’s driving to begin with.
Make the passing grade for a driving test 20% higher than it currently is, and make everyone take a driving test every five years. You get one re-test if you fail.
And once you hit 70, driving tests every year.
Anyone who fails under the new regulations would have been causing a lot of problems on the roads.
You had me until only 1 chance to fail; instead, you should temporarily get your license reduced back to the level 2 learners license. Then another chance to fail and retest before you get bumped down to a level 1 learners license.
Also, every year for 70+ is excessive. Passing a cog screen should be sufficient. Retesting every 5 years is already pretty good.
Want to get bad drivers off the roads? Give them another way to get around.
Autonomous vehicles are the only achievable solution to distracted driving. Individuals can be nice but people as a whole are lazy and selfish pieces of shit. You’ll never get anywhere close to even 90% doing the right thing just by relying on people’s good intentions.
Full autonomous vehicles, and particularly significant levels of adoption of them are decades away. It’s taken roughly 20 years for hybrid vehicles to become “big”, and that’s after the tech already existed. We still don’t even have anywhere close to reliable full autonomous driving.
It usually is much more effective to make plans and changes based off what currently exists rather than anything that isn’t absolute immediate future. No reason to say no to the good because you’re busy waiting for “perfect”.
Full autonomous vehicles, and particularly significant levels of adoption of them are decades away
the only way fully-autonomous vehicles will truly work and work as envisioned, is if user-operated ones are taken off the roads entirely. and yes, that is at least ‘decades away’
At this point we’re not even sure if fully autonomous vehicles are possible.
Yes that one guy has been saying it’ll be ready next year for the passed 10 years, but no self driving company has been able to get an autonomous car from point A to point B in all road conditions that a competent human can manage.
Even aircraft autopilot is not as autonomous as what people want out of self driving cars. Pilots are still required to be at their seats the entire flight in case something unexpected happens. And there are a lot more unexpected things on a road than in the middle of the sky. Even discounting human drivers being in the way, a self driving car needs to be able to recognize everything a human can and react to it better than a human would. I’m not sure that’s possible, even with “AI”. The human brain is insanely good at pattern matching, and it took millions of years of trial and error evolution to luck our way into that. How can someone guarantee an AI is going to be better?
That’s not just “at least decades away;” that’s literally impossible. Streets, by definition, will always need to accommodate road users that will never be computerized, such as pedestrians, cyclists, horse-drawn carriages, etc.
Could public transit be considered to reduce the need for everyone to drive?
Could? Yes!
Will? Well, not in the US at least. :(
Definitely but there’s practical limitations to implementing large scale public transit in the US even if the desire to build it existed, which I would argue it doesn’t at a large enough scale to make it happen.
It’ll never happen if we all agree it’ll never happen. I like taking about them, as it’s my way of making it more likely to happen
I’d like to call your optimism inspiring but from where I sit it looks more like delusion. Don’t get me wrong I would love a huge public transit buildout in the US, I just don’t see any realistic path to making it a reality in the current political and economic climate. I also don’t see that changing within a decade or more at minimum.
No argument from me. I’m probably insane. But I’m not under oath, or doing a job, or undertaking a responsibility; I’m just me, talking to strangers in a public chat room. Why should I limit myself to the practical? Is there a rule against expressing dreams in this room?
And I agree, even if I convinced everyone overnight, and we had the willpower to do it, I’m still proposing infrastructure changes that I may not see finished in my life, but building for the next generation is still noble to me, in my insanity.
The US is not special. The fact that the country is big doesn’t matter; people still cluster together in cities just like they do everywhere else. The only things that makes transit harder here than other places is the degree of regulatory capture by the automobile and fossil fuels industries and the degree to which the public has been brainwashed by their propaganda.
It does matter that the US is one big country, but even if it didn’t you still made my point for me. The other things you listed are just as large obstacles as the size of the country itself and there is no easy solution to those other problems but you just blew past them as if naming them would make them go away. The fact that you identified them correctly doesn’t mean you have any realistic chance of overcoming them.
How about trains? That way 99% of people dont’ even need to drive, ever.
Sure that works great, now since that infrastructure doesn’t exist just go get it built. I’m sure massive government spending that benefits the general public more than corporations will be very easy to secure.
People don’t use turn signals, speed through residential neighborhoods, change lanes in the middle of intersections, it’s insane.
It’s been like that since I was a kid in the 80’s.
Back then cars also made bad drivers go squish.
Unfortunately so did everyone else involved
I see a mother fucker run through four-way stops nearly every day by my home. It’s infuriating.
OK but why is my state mandated minimum insurance nearly $90 a month for a Toyota Prius that I only drive like 30 miles per week?
My liability only plan was $55 in 2018.
I’m over 30 years old with no tickets or accidents on my record.
Maybe the whole data farming thing is being used as an excuse also, but this is bullshit all up and down.
I have never driven a car that tracks me, and I pay approx $50 a month for two cars.
My car is two years older than me and basic traffic insurance is ~300€ (equivalent) per year.
How long you been with your current insurer?
I have been with mine 30 years. Still getting reamed
Sooo… shop around? Existing customers who show no indication that they will leave are prime candidates for reaming.
Oh i did. Everyone else is actually higher priced. Not kidding its insane. We are being made to pay for everyone else’s habits. How a shared pool works i guess
Have you considered one of the alternative brokers which offer pay as you go liability coverage?
One example: https://www.withhugo.com/
I tried liberty, root, and allstate. They all wanted more than 800 a year for liability. Walked away from them and stuck with progressive as i have been with them for 30 years and liability with hem for is 600 due to my longevity. Comp&coll is what i had up til last year when they jacked it up from 699 to 2150.
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Mr PoopyButthole lives in a state with a mandated minimum price. Can’t you read?
I doubt it’s the price that’s mandated, they probably mean the state mandated minimum coverage.
Yes you are likely correct. It is I who cannot comprehend.
Is it too much to ask for a car that doesn’t spy on me, is reasonably comfortable, is efficient, and maybe has a few extra “smart” features to help me not run into other people? I guess my bike will do for now.
I have a 17 year old car with ESP (electronic stability) and without any ‘smart’ stuff. I’ll run it until its last breath.
They have those cars. You’re not rich enough.
That’s a smarter bet anyway.
Can’t wait till all the genealogy companies like 23 & me start selling our genetic information to insurance companies.
… you think they don’t? You need to read the fine print again. It’s not proven where it’s going, but they absolutely have the right to sell your genetic information and already do.
Yup… Your family has genes showing a history of heart problems? That’s gonna costa ya!
https://gizmodo.com/23andme-is-selling-your-data-but-not-how-you-think-1794340474
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-30/23andme-will-give-gsk-access-to-consumer-dna-data
The usual warnings about “anonymized data” and “data aggregation” apply.
It creeped me how many youtube channels I watched suddenly started pushing it.
Makes me glad my, going on 17 year old Toyota will likely run forever and is as dumb as a box of rocks regarding this stuff.
As someone who daily drives a 20 year old Toyota, I couldn’t agree more.
I no longer have to daily drive mine so as I said I hope it lasts a LONG time!
Mine tried to get me to plug in a monitoring device into our cars’ OBD-II ports after we signed up. I said Hell Naw and returned them shits to the sender. They said my rates would go up if I didn’t use it and they didn’t really change.
Next car I get will have to be neutered of such spyware, since they’re apparently building it all in now. Current car just had a box I unplugged to disable the 3G cellular network connectivity and the car works just fine without it.
We lowkey need a database of how to airgap cars. Spying hardware started being common long enough ago that people aren’t really going to be able to avoid it when buying used, unless they have the time and money to maintain a classic car.
It isn’t just your driving either. They also very commonly log location and audio inside the car as well.
Yes!! It frustrates me so much when the proposed answer is “buy an older car”, which is not a longterm solution.
It would be cool to have an iFixit-like score for each model.
Iirc Mozilla tried, but they all were so terrible everybody got an F according to their (IMO pretty fair) standards.
This was a completely different thing - the report was about what data they collect or have the capability to collect, rather than how easy it is to remove the telematics unit and which functions would be impacted by it. The suggested measures against this were pretty basic, no mention was made of actual modifications.
I’d expect in most cars it’s as simple as pulling a fuse for the cellular radio. But depending on how the car is designed that might break other features like the infotainment or keyless entry. It’s hit or miss how any given car will react to things being unplugged.
They will record it and upload it at your next service.
us insurance always sounded like a scam.
moreso now.
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Yeah, that is an important side effect of this. In their constant pursuit of higher profits, insurance companies can use this data to more accurately analyze what factors into making someone high risk.
They sure as hell won’t be discounting people that don’t show those traits, but it’s something.
In a civilized world, heads would roll over this.
It used to be that when someone used the phrase “in a civilized world”, it was intended to move you back into it. Nowadays it just feels like wild gesticulating at an impossible state…
My vehicle is not trackable but my insurance tripled in two years so there is more going on than data harvesting
I’m driving way safer and way less miles, combination of shorter commute and I don’t want to wear my truck out driving like an ass…I’m my rate is literally doubled
Untrackable might mean you get lumped with the worst actuary table in terms of risk as an unknown quantity or as a form of pressure to let them track you or as a way to create a defence moat of people (your rates will go up like these untrackable vehicles) if the government tries to intervene to stop them from basing rates to tracking.
The article alleges, though without evidence, that the tracking is just an excuse to raise rates.
A quick search didn’t turn up quite the right statistics, but traffic fatalities have been seriously on the rise in the US. That probably implies higher payouts. (WP)
But also, when trackable unsafe drivers have to pay more (and trackable safe driver less), then the unsafe drivers will prefer to be untrackable. You may be on the receiving end of the recalculated actuary tables.
Mine nearly doubled over 2 years. They cited increased costs of parts and repair work. Might be true, might not be. Might be they increased prices more than their costs did.
Your car might not be trackable but do you use Google maps or Waze?
“Cost of living”. Sure people will start getting inflation beating payrises soon.
Cost of living for the shareholders.
Everyone should just become a shareholder, we will all be rich then…
You can be. Probably pretty cheaply. The problem is that there’s shareholders like you and I, then there’s Shareholders that make millions with a point or two tick up in stock value. The latter are the ones I’m referring to. You and I owning tens or a few hundred shares don’t rate.
maybe there is a way to disable the mobile module in these vehicles?
No data means you get the highest rates.
You can’t solve systemic problems without regulations.
Here’s a “funny” story. Back in the day I was working (IT) for insurance companies. I’ve pitched an idea to one of the larges companies about a device connected to an OBD port to track a driver’s habits and adjust premiums based on that. I was turned down, but I heard from an unofficial source that the company was already testing such a device. That was 15 years ago.
All your anecdote tells me is that you have questionable ethics.
It’s rude to judge a person on the basis of a vague description of an idea. My idea was to collect the driver’s data (harsh breaking, rapid acceleration, previous history, etc.) and set the premiums accordingly. Someone who drove carefully would pay less and someone who drove recklessly would pay more. Keep in mind, this was back when Google was still a “don’t be evil” company and it was before the days of surveillance capitalism.
Keep in mind, this was back when Google was still a “don’t be evil” company and it was before the days of surveillance capitalism.
So you were an innovator in surveillance capitalism. I think that might be why the person you replied to said you have questionable ethics. I share this opinion.
I hope you step in water while wearing socks.
Here’s a “funny” story. Back in the day I was working (IT) for insurance companies. I’ve pitched an idea to one of the larges companies about a device connected to an OBD port to track a driver’s habits and adjust premiums based on that. I was turned down, but I heard from an unofficial source that the company was already testing such a device. That was 15 years ago.
Privacy regulations? They don’t know how to handle all the data? They realized they’d have to triple rates based on the actual data they were receiving?
Imagine sharing this anecdote with no shame.
So you were the “horse armor DLC” of car insurance companies. Congratulations
I just don’t understand how car manufacturers can do this. We need better privacy laws. Also, why is it a game of always protesting and backlash just to keep our basic rights? Smh
Wait, is this why my insurance is suddenly so low? Does it go both ways? People always call me a “boring” driver. As far as I’m concerned, driving on the open road shouldn’t be “fun”, it should be taken seriously. There are places you can go to drive for fun at no one else’s expense.
