BIG BROTHER RIDING SHOTGUN

ONLY RECENTLY DID AN AUTOMAKER say it had stopped riding shotgun and, what’s worse, tattling on its drivers. Kashmir Hill gives details in “General Motors Quits Sharing Driving Behavior with Data Brokers,” The New York Times, March 22, 2024. 

OnStar Smart Driver. Hill writes, “The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. The drivers were enrolled—some unknowingly, they said—in OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in G.M.’s internet-connected cars that collected data about how the car had been driven and promised feedback and digital badges for good driving.”

Hill notes, “An internal document, reviewed by The Times, showed that as of 2022, more than eight million vehicles were included in Smart Driver. An employee familiar with the program said the company’s annual revenue from Smart Driver was in the low millions of dollars.”

“Some drivers,” Hill reports, “said their insurance rates had increased as a result of the captured data, which G.M. shared with two brokers, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk. The firms then sold the data to insurance companies.”

No Longer Being Shared. “Since Wednesday [March 20, 2024], Hill relates, “ ‘OnStar Smart Driver customer data is no longer being shared with LexisNexis or Verisk,’ a G.M. spokeswoman, Malorie Lucich, said in an emailed statement. ‘Customer trust is a priority for us, and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies.’ ” 

Yet a Problem? Cheryl Winokur Munk, CNBC, shares “How to Stop Your Internet-connected Car from Sharing and Maybe Even Selling Your Driving Data.” in Money Report, March 23, 2024.

Winokur Munk writes of automotive connectivity, “… there are growing privacy concerns as reports proliferate about car companies sharing driver data with insurers, and as car companies get into the insurance business themselves. One is that driving habits and car-usage details could be reported to data collectors and shared with insurance carriers for rate decisions. “

“That’s not to be confused,” Winokur Munk notes, “with the new model of usage-based insurance offered by companies from Progressive to Root, that offers drivers the potential to earn lower rates if they specifically allow insurers to install devices in cars that track their behavior.”

More Than an EDR. Wikipedia describes, “An event data recorder (EDR)… is a device installed in some automobiles to record information related to traffic collisions.”

Wikipedia amplifies, “Some EDRs continuously record data, overwriting the previous few minutes until a crash stops them, and others are activated by crash-like events (such as sudden changes in velocity) and may continue to record until the accident is over, or until the recording time is expired….  Some vehicles have communications systems (such as GM‘s OnStar system) that may transmit some data, such as an alert that the airbags have been deployed, to a remote location.”

Note, EDRs respond to accidents, in marked contrast to routine motoring with Big Brother riding Shotgun. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024