OT: Car manufacturers are sharing your driving data with insurance companies...

[edgerat]

Insurance prices are going up because insurance companies are socialist. When ours went up 30% I called our agent and screamed and yelled. He said that 1in 4 drivers are uninsured so, the insurance companies are getting their money from the law-abiding to cover the freeloaders.

[dddd]

Insurance prices must also go up when for example it costs $8k to repair the minorly-damaged Tesla that you bumped into in the parking lot.

I'm not making these numbers up.
And actually, the costs of repair have only gone up since I witnessed one such repair claim of a rear corner impact from someone backing out of a parking space in their Subaru, hitting a Tesla.

And yes, with motorists going largely unpunished for driving without insurance or even registration these days, the rest of the motoring public is defacto paying their bills.

[Mike V]

Not for just insurance

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a4...-repossession/

[KonaSS]

Auto insurance rates have gone up due to a multitude of factors:

• Cost to repair increases as technology has made our cars more expensive to repair. Inflation has also increased both repair service cost and the cost of parts.
• Increase in length to repair due to parts shortages. Increases rental car coverage costs.
• Increase is that rental car coverage on a daily basis by itself
• Increases in the frequency of accidents. Many carriers saw a decrease in accidents during covid, lowered rates, and are not having to reverse when the number increases as people increased the amount they drive

Many carriers have a program that you can opt into that monitors your driving and can provide discounts for safer driving habits. This just makes sense, certain behaviors increase your chance of an accident. But you don't have to participate if you don't want to.

Finally, long term actuarial studies show that credit scores correlate with your riskiness as a driver. Hence many companies want to use that as a factor in rating you for the risk you present. Why? - I can't fully explain, but likely speaks to the responsibleness of a person.

[coreydoesntknow]

I can almost certainly assure you that my 2005 Volvo is not sharing any of my driving data with big tech

[LadyDog]

Will not say the data collected does not play a factor, but in general insurance rates are increasing.

More people on the road than the past few years. More accidents. Increased average car values(both new & used). More costly accidents. Not enough parts. Cars being declared a total loss in instances where in the past, it would get repaired. Ect, etc, etc.

Coming from someone in the insurance industry.

[charliedid]

Originally Posted by nortx-Dave

USAA has an app you download to your smartphone that monitors several aspects of your driving. They sent me an offer for a 10% discount off my premiums if I participated. The discount is a one time thing, but they also offer a potential discount based on safe driving practices. They promised that rates will not go up based on data collected, only potential discounts. I passed.

Hmm, I never got the memo about the App.

Thanks

[unterhausen]

Originally Posted by charliedid

Hmm, I never got the memo about the App.

Afaik, they still have it. This discussion reminds me they give you a discount for taking a safe driver course, which probably helps more than their app.

We never got any discount from using the app, and it's a battery hog because it really needs constant location data to work. Imagine detecting hard braking from gps data. I suppose the app didn't hurt anything other than the state of charge of my phone, but since all the events I got were false, I didn't figure I would ever get a discount from it. I didn't need the annoyance.

[jemoryl]

Originally Posted by edgerat

Insurance prices are going up because insurance companies are socialist. When ours went up 30% I called our agent and screamed and yelled. He said that 1in 4 drivers are uninsured so, the insurance companies are getting their money from the law-abiding to cover the freeloaders.

Insurance companies are many things, but socialist?

[charliedid]

Originally Posted by unterhausen

Afaik, they still have it. This discussion reminds me they give you a discount for taking a safe driver course, which probably helps more than their app.

We never got any discount from using the app, and it's a battery hog because it really needs constant location data to work. Imagine detecting hard braking from gps data. I suppose the app didn't hurt anything other than the state of charge of my phone, but since all the events I got were false, I didn't figure I would ever get a discount from it. I didn't need the annoyance.

Thanks

I suppose I can live without it!

[OtayBW]

Originally Posted by jemoryl

Insurance companies are many things, but socialist?

Yeah - that got me as well. I'll have to cogitate on that for a while....

[verticaldoug]

You can complain, but the reality is auto-insurance companies have taken a beating since 2020.

I will just take Progressive as an example.

Revenue boom from high premiums, but costs boomed more.
Net income fell, loss ratios (percentage of premium used for claims) ballooned from 63% to 79% from 2020 to 2023. This is the root of the problem as others have said.

[veloduffer]

Originally Posted by edgerat

Insurance prices are going up because insurance companies are socialist. When ours went up 30% I called our agent and screamed and yelled. He said that 1in 4 drivers are uninsured so, the insurance companies are getting their money from the law-abiding to cover the freeloaders.

It's not socialist - pooling of good and bad risks is how insurance works. If the only insureds were bad risks, then the premium costs would be astronomical. And in turn, they wouldn't buy insurance and take the risk of being uninsured, which would result in the good drivers bearing all the costs.

A good example is what is happening in the homeowner's insurance market for high risk areas like FL and southern CA. Nearly all the major insurance carriers have pulled out of the market since they can't raise rates enough to cover the more frequent and costly climate events. As a result, what's left are small carriers who may not survive financially in a large catastrophe event and the state establishes an insurance fund that is usually enough to cover only moderate catastrophe event. Homeowners may not be able to get full coverage (replacement) and bear the risk of being partially insured.

As noted from others, car accidents are expensive due to all the new tech in something simple like headlights and mirrors, the latter has sensors for blind spot detection, heated elements for frost, cameras for 360 degree views, etc.
Most items are above the deductibles on an avg policy ($1k-$2.5K).

[OtayBW]

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

You can complain, but the reality is auto-insurance companies have taken a beating since 2020.

I will just take Progressive as an example.

Revenue boom from high premiums, but costs boomed more.
Net income fell, loss ratios (percentage of premium used for claims) ballooned from 63% to 79% from 2020 to 2023. This is the root of the problem as others have said.

Many types of insurance have gone way up in the last ~2-3 years. My auto policy, fortunately, only went up 6% with my company, but I've been a pretty good risk with them for a long time.

Any idea what kinds of costs have gone up since ~2020?

[C40_guy]

Originally Posted by wc1934

You were able to disable it - how?

You have to cut the cable that runs from the carburetor to the choke control.