from Hacker News

Boston startups merge to create driver-tracking giant for insurance industry

by Deinos on 6/17/21, 2:12 PM with 31 comments

• by nimbius on 6/17/21, 3:15 PM

  speaking as someone with a working knowledge of the technology used to track drivers for insurance purposes (OBD2 and CANbus) Ive always been remarkably suspicious of this sort of black-box "we will save you money" proposition.

  tapping into the CAN (car area network) system on a vehicle lets you see things like timing retardation and advancement, barometric pressure, o2 levels, and throttle body positions. it tells you what these systems are doing in realtime but it fails to tell you why these systems did these things. at best youll have to make a guess, and insurance companies seem to have an incentive to lean into the "because you drive poorly" excuse in order to minimize risk to investors.

  theres no target and no set of parameters that define what an altruistically good driver is in the eyes of these companies, only the companies insistence it can "save you money" without explaining what you must do other than "be a good driver" and install their widget, which runs mystery code that interacts with one of the most critical parts of your vehicle that may itself not even be DOT approved..

• by blakesterz on 6/17/21, 2:38 PM

  Weird, how did I miss that apps like this even exist? Seems a little creepy to me, though maybe it cuts premiums for some people?

  "Both companies’ core products are apps on smartphones that use the sensors in the phones to collect data about how people are driving, such as whether they are speeding, frequently braking hard, or picking up their phones to text when they should be paying attention to the road."

  https://archive.is/u0Qpu#selection-1417.0-1424.0

• by throwaway0a5e on 6/17/21, 2:46 PM

  If the premiums approach being sufficiently fine grained as to account for individual risk then what's the purpose? Why not just squirrel the money away in some sort of HSA-esque fund and cut out the expensive middleman entity? If the state is gonna make me pay for mandatory coverage why not just do it with taxes and have one less set of predatory companies trying to screw me?

• by MikeUt on 6/17/21, 2:40 PM

  Together with mandatory insurance laws, is the government literally forcing us to let companies spy on us? Unless you're wealthy enough to afford the higher rates (for as long as those are offered).

• by lardo on 6/17/21, 3:00 PM

  Metromile also runs a Boston office. Are they a competitor or higher up on the stack?

• by pruthvishetty on 6/17/21, 5:49 PM

  Tesla has been doing this since 2019.