For a price, would you let car insurer along for the ride? -asks a USA Presently technology story by Kevin Maney. It seemsthat Progressive Insurance and IBM have worked out a scheme topay drivers to be safer - by monitoring their every move intheir own cars, and how fast they make that move, and wherethey park, and what time they drive.
There is a some procedure that an auto insurance claim adjuster has to utilize to come up from the amount the insurance company will pay. You will usually get two quotes - one that will see the car getting repaired at a best of the line garage and another if you take a cash settlement on the claim and get the work done yourself. The auto insurance adjuster knows that countless people have friends who can do the work cheaper and often take the money.
Once you decide how you prefer to proceed, the insurance company will issue a check. If you are paying on the vehicle, the read will be made out jointly to you and the lender. Otherwise the check comes directly to you. The job of the auto insurance adjuster is only to access the damages, Any dispute you have regarding the report made by the auto insurance claim adjuster has to be done through the insurance company. Keep this in mind for the adjuster is only an ordinary person like yourself trying to make a living.
The program is being tested in Minnesota and in the U.K. in aprivacy busting program that rewards drivers for keeping underthe maximum speed limits and driving during safer times ofday. It's an captivating twist that is compared here to ashopper reward card that monitors what you buy, though itdoesn't give you lower prices if you buy healthy food - whichseems like the best analogy. (But it does let the food chainsknow how often you shop and how much you spend on what typesof food, and alcohol, and cigarettes and trashy tabloids.)
Drivers must attach an electronic monitor to their cars thatdownloads information which is generated and stored there indiagnostic chips included in most newer model vehicles. As theydrive, it stores current driving behavior - and location - anddriving times and at the end of the defined time, drivers takethe unit into the house, attach a USB cable and download thatinformation into their computer and transmit it toProgressive.
But the insurance discount program does have an interestingtwist in the Minnesota test. Apparently drivers who see fromtheir downloaded information (or at best know they drove badly attimes) that they exceeded maximum speed
limits, drove duringexpensive times (2am when bars close is most costly, after11pm is thereon) can choose NOT to send that information toProgressive and pay the normal undiscounted insurance rate.
It appears to have the true benefit of making drivers becomemore cautious and drive within limits of the law during safehours. There is nothing wrong through this for those willing togive up the information. This permits those willing to bemonitored the choice to send the information to their insurerand get a discount or NOT send it to pay normal rates. It'sworth considering.
The disturbing behalf of this, again, as in every instance, is the possiblemerging of multiple databases to form near perfectsurveillance pictures of us on each new development. Oursupermarket discounts show that big database what we eat,what else we buy at the grocery, the insurance informationdefines our travels and schedule, our credit and debit carduse defines our spending, travel and lifestyles, whilemultiple other databases from airline security info to phonerecords can be merged at any time to form near perfectpictures of our lives for anyone that wants to access it.
Once a national ID (driver licenses will soon sell mandatorymagnetic information and will serve as a defacto national ID),we can be fully monitored, tracked, analyzed and digitized toform a definitely invasive database of numbers and bits ofinformation with regard to each of us.
The sources of data in regard to each one of us are growing daily. Theconcern is the loss or abuse of that data through commercialand/or governmental negligence and/or criminal intent. Themethods to access that data are growing as the sourcesproliferate.
Privacy is something we give up in small bits for smallbenefits, such as cheaper extrude utilizing supermarket loyalty cardsand insurance discounts using car monitors hooked up to ourinsurance carrier. We need laws to control and safegaurd eachof those databases and stop any merging of those multiplesources of data into the ultimate Big Brother database.
I prefer my car insurance reduced and I'm willing to considerthis newest scheme if I have choice of whether to send my infoto my insurer. I will send it when I've been good and won'twhen I have been less good. But I don't like to have it merged on myother sources of data or shared among commercial interests whomay see fit to sell it to each other.
It gets additional intriguing daily. Who is in control of thisprivacy devouring data monster?
