LexisNexis, which generates consumer risk profiles for the insurers, knew about every trip G.M. drivers had taken in their cars, including when they sped, braked too hard or accelerated rapidly.
Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
“I don’t know the definition of hard brake. My passenger’s head isn’t hitting the dash,” he said. “Same with acceleration. I’m not peeling out. I’m not sure how the car defines that. I don’t feel I’m driving aggressively or dangerously.”
In response to questions from The New York Times, G.M. confirmed that it shares “select insights” about hard braking, hard accelerating, speeding over 80 miles an hour and drive time of Smart Driver enrollees with LexisNexis and another data broker that works with the insurance industry called Verisk.
Customers turn on Smart Driver, said Ms. Lucich, the G.M. spokeswoman, “at the time of purchase or through their vehicle mobile app.” It is possible that G.M. drivers who insisted they didn’t opt in were unknowingly signed up at the dealership, where salespeople can receive bonuses for successful enrollment of customers in OnStar services, including Smart Driver, according to a company manual.
After LexisNexis and Verisk get data from consumers’ cars, they sell information about how people are driving to insurance companies. To access it, the insurance companies must get consent from the drivers — say, when they go out shopping for car insurance and sign off on boilerplate language that gives insurance companies the right to pull third-party reports.
This summary contains 489 words. I’m neither a bot nor open source, but the bot summary was poo.
As usual, lack of transparency is of key concern. Digital opt-in where other people have physical control of the device and have a profit motivation should not be acceptable.
The quote about what is a hard brake exactly or heavy acceleration is most relevant to my thoughts. Without any context, are you hard braking to avoid dangers? How many hard brakes are acceptable? What is the penalty for hard braking, etc?
My girlfriend tried the OBD reader for her insurance for a bit, and it didn’t anything one way or the other to her insurance. For something as random as driving, I dont see who would want to volunteer for it. We know the only direction prices ever move is up, so what does the consumer have to gain?
A company that I worked for partnered/worked with LN. They are legit. Some of the smartest people I know. They are a very old data warehouse (among many other things) company.
New Hondas with front cameras (used for adaptive cruise control and lane departure warnings) will read speed limit signs to display them in the dashboard.
It only parses the number, so if a US car is in Canada it will say the speed limit is 110 mph on the highway. If these GM cars do the same they’d probably think any Canadian car going for a weekend trip to the US did so at prison-worthy speeds.
Based on the text of the article (speeding above 80mph)and my experience with an insurance app, it’s simply looking for anything over 80mph from calculated GPS speed. It doesn’t care about 75 in a 25, just that you don’t break the highest possible speed limit
You forget that in the States, they say “speed limit is X, so I go X+10”, sometimes even 20. It’s very common for comments to mention that the flow of traffic is literally 25% faster than the “limit” - it’s like culturally so many USians treat the limit as a lower limit. 🫣
I’m in Southeast Pennsylvania and they’ll whack you for 10 over, but 20-30 over is not rare here. People just don’t care about anyone but themselves on the road.
I take all back roads to work now and it’s much better even though the drive is twice as long.
I take it those are the people downvoting that comment, like I made the speed limits or collect the data. 😆
I didn’t know if I’ve been anywhere that people wouldn’t say 80+ is fast though.
My old commute was a half hour all highway and busy roads. New commute is an hour, but all lazy back roads and it’s so much more relaxing. People make driving into a win/lose game or something around here.
Around where I’m at you’re at semi-significant risk of getting pulled over if you’re driving under the speed limit. The police assume you’re drunk or high and if you’re not they’ll give you something about “being a hazard to other traffic”. Speed limit+10 is the safest speed to move at around here because you’re matching other traffic and matching what the cops expect of you.
There’s one exception to this: the southern leg of Texas Highway 130, which runs east of Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin, has an 85mph speed limit.
I used an app version of driving tracking. It gave me an OK discount of around 5-10% just for participation but I didn’t like the fear of tripping it’s alarms - over 80mph and hard braking. It seemed like it could penalize me for the time of day as well, giving different risk ratings for time of day and what day. Sure, 80mph should be easy enough to handle, but the packs of cars on my commute at the time would cause some interesting events where I’d slowly get up to 75 and still get passed. Come up on someone doing 70 and it’s easy to tip into the 80s to make a pass in a faster lane. But the real concern, for me, is that it made me brake softer. I genuinely got concerned I’d rear end someone to not upset the app. I was worried it’d be a subconscious thing that causes a hiccup in my response, making a bad situation worse. Why would I take the penalty for someone who cut me off?
Now, I think I’m a great driver. Lots of experience early on at a dealership, lots of small quick practice sessions for pushing limits to learn and stay honed, re-learning about attentiveness on a motorcycle, and so on. But I don’t trust the rest of the people out here on a good day, let alone worrying about their brake nanny. And I get it, hard braking to save yourself (not just being inattentive or aggressive) is still an indicator of crash liklihood, but fuck that.
This matches what my girlfriend’s experience seemed to be, a weirdness about trying to please the device that has no real awareness of the situation. Second guessing yourself in an emergency isn’t the best outcome.
The quote about what is a hard brake exactly or heavy acceleration is most relevant to my thoughts. Without any context, are you hard braking to avoid dangers? How many hard brakes are acceptable? What is the penalty for hard braking, etc?
What happens if your specific vehicle has a sensor somewhat out of spec that keeps errantly triggering harsh braking? You wouldn’t know the sensor is activating, you wouldn’t know that the information is being fed to your insurance, and you wouldn’t know why your insurance is priced as it is. You have no transparency as to what is going on nor any realistic way of fixing the issue (because the vehicle runs fine after all and nobody can define what “harsh braking” even is).
Such a hypothetical situation is unlikely but even several dozen or hundred examples is a bit too much…
Also, since you are never directly informed that you are harshly braking or accelerating, you are unlikely to improve how you drive to avoid those things. If you had a notification that the braking action was a bit too harsh then you could strive to avoid that in the future… not so much if you are never told that in the first place.
This summary contains 489 words. I’m neither a bot nor open source, but the bot summary was poo.
As usual, lack of transparency is of key concern. Digital opt-in where other people have physical control of the device and have a profit motivation should not be acceptable.
The quote about what is a hard brake exactly or heavy acceleration is most relevant to my thoughts. Without any context, are you hard braking to avoid dangers? How many hard brakes are acceptable? What is the penalty for hard braking, etc?
My girlfriend tried the OBD reader for her insurance for a bit, and it didn’t anything one way or the other to her insurance. For something as random as driving, I dont see who would want to volunteer for it. We know the only direction prices ever move is up, so what does the consumer have to gain?
A company that I worked for partnered/worked with LN. They are legit. Some of the smartest people I know. They are a very old data warehouse (among many other things) company.
If you would like the same report done: https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/consumer They make it very easy.
Is there anything you can do once you get the report?
This is the kinda thing that I’d probably be happier not knowing if there’s nothing I can do about it.
I just ordered a report to see what providers I can switch away from or what data I can poison with fake stuff
Depends on which state you are in. If your from California, for example, you can tell them to not keep any data.
It accounts for speeding… How? Cross reference location with local speed limits? Record times above an internally set speed?
New Hondas with front cameras (used for adaptive cruise control and lane departure warnings) will read speed limit signs to display them in the dashboard.
It only parses the number, so if a US car is in Canada it will say the speed limit is 110 mph on the highway. If these GM cars do the same they’d probably think any Canadian car going for a weekend trip to the US did so at prison-worthy speeds.
Yeah, thank god it never reads unrelated signs on the side, and car never tells me the limit is 30 on a fucking 130 kmh highway.
Based on the text of the article (speeding above 80mph)and my experience with an insurance app, it’s simply looking for anything over 80mph from calculated GPS speed. It doesn’t care about 75 in a 25, just that you don’t break the highest possible speed limit
It mentioned logging speeds above 80 mph.
That’s the highest speed limit I can find for the US, so if you’re 80+, it seems you are breaking the law regardless of location.
You forget that in the States, they say “speed limit is X, so I go X+10”, sometimes even 20. It’s very common for comments to mention that the flow of traffic is literally 25% faster than the “limit” - it’s like culturally so many USians treat the limit as a lower limit. 🫣
The posted speed limit plus 5mph is considered normal where I’m from in America. 10 over is asking for a ticket.
I visited Texas once, and was amazed to see most everyone driving 20-30mph over the posted limit, even past the speed traps with no consequences.
I’m in Southeast Pennsylvania and they’ll whack you for 10 over, but 20-30 over is not rare here. People just don’t care about anyone but themselves on the road.
I take all back roads to work now and it’s much better even though the drive is twice as long.
Drove home going 85 and still being passed yesterday. I live in Texas.
If you’re not going as fast as they are, you’re a potential danger now.
This is particularly stupid considering that your average shitty brodozer is pretty much incapable of emergency braking from 85mph.
I take it those are the people downvoting that comment, like I made the speed limits or collect the data. 😆
I didn’t know if I’ve been anywhere that people wouldn’t say 80+ is fast though.
My old commute was a half hour all highway and busy roads. New commute is an hour, but all lazy back roads and it’s so much more relaxing. People make driving into a win/lose game or something around here.
Around where I’m at you’re at semi-significant risk of getting pulled over if you’re driving under the speed limit. The police assume you’re drunk or high and if you’re not they’ll give you something about “being a hazard to other traffic”. Speed limit+10 is the safest speed to move at around here because you’re matching other traffic and matching what the cops expect of you.
There’s one exception to this: the southern leg of Texas Highway 130, which runs east of Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin, has an 85mph speed limit.
Even the speed limits are bigger in Texas! 🤠
So you can get to a decent state faster.
I used an app version of driving tracking. It gave me an OK discount of around 5-10% just for participation but I didn’t like the fear of tripping it’s alarms - over 80mph and hard braking. It seemed like it could penalize me for the time of day as well, giving different risk ratings for time of day and what day. Sure, 80mph should be easy enough to handle, but the packs of cars on my commute at the time would cause some interesting events where I’d slowly get up to 75 and still get passed. Come up on someone doing 70 and it’s easy to tip into the 80s to make a pass in a faster lane. But the real concern, for me, is that it made me brake softer. I genuinely got concerned I’d rear end someone to not upset the app. I was worried it’d be a subconscious thing that causes a hiccup in my response, making a bad situation worse. Why would I take the penalty for someone who cut me off?
Now, I think I’m a great driver. Lots of experience early on at a dealership, lots of small quick practice sessions for pushing limits to learn and stay honed, re-learning about attentiveness on a motorcycle, and so on. But I don’t trust the rest of the people out here on a good day, let alone worrying about their brake nanny. And I get it, hard braking to save yourself (not just being inattentive or aggressive) is still an indicator of crash liklihood, but fuck that.
This matches what my girlfriend’s experience seemed to be, a weirdness about trying to please the device that has no real awareness of the situation. Second guessing yourself in an emergency isn’t the best outcome.
What happens if your specific vehicle has a sensor somewhat out of spec that keeps errantly triggering harsh braking? You wouldn’t know the sensor is activating, you wouldn’t know that the information is being fed to your insurance, and you wouldn’t know why your insurance is priced as it is. You have no transparency as to what is going on nor any realistic way of fixing the issue (because the vehicle runs fine after all and nobody can define what “harsh braking” even is).
Such a hypothetical situation is unlikely but even several dozen or hundred examples is a bit too much…
Also, since you are never directly informed that you are harshly braking or accelerating, you are unlikely to improve how you drive to avoid those things. If you had a notification that the braking action was a bit too harsh then you could strive to avoid that in the future… not so much if you are never told that in the first place.
Also, what if you need to hard brake or hard accelerate in order to prevent a crash? There’s no way for them to determine that was the case.