More auto insurers want to track your driving behavior in exchange for lower rates

[gdale6]

"Fair Isaac Corp made its name giving people credit scores

Now, the company known as FICO wants to rate your driving skills. It is developing algorithms along with eDriving, a provider of driver training, to assess a driver's level of risk. FICO will test its driver score on teens early next year and eventually plans to roll it out to all consumers."

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/23/more-auto-insurers-want-to-track-your-driving-behavior-in-exchange-fo...

[805orbust]

Ahhhh, the sound of more money being sucked from honest, law abiding citizens 

[Thomas_Thumb]

[Anonymous]

That's why I laugh every time I see an auto insurance commercial trying to get people to take a device that tracks your driving habits, sure they say they'll give you discounts and your rates will not go up, until policy renewal time 🙄  

[grillandwinemaster]

I will never willingly allow "them" to track my driving habits. Kudos to California for not allowing credit history to impact your insurance rates. 

For years I had terrible credit! I never receive a ticket or caused an accident during that time frame. I just don't see the correlation between credit and driving.

[FroggieMom]

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@grillandwinemaster wrote:

I will never willingly allow "them" to track my driving habits. Kudos to California for not allowing credit history to impact your insurance rates. 

For years I had terrible credit! I never receive a ticket or caused an accident during that time frame. I just don't see the correlation between credit and driving.

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I agree wholeheartedly grill!  Sadly, I live in TX where it IS allowed to base your insurance premium from your CR.  My poor sister hasn't had a ticket or accident in YEARS and because she has to live with a fixed budget and therefore doesn't get credit cards she doesn't need her score is stagnant in the mid 600's and she pays more for her car insurance because of it...which FURTHER adds to her tight budget!

My sister in law recently told me she feel for this trap of the device in your car, we'll see what happens to her rate 6 mo from now.  I'm also curious if the insurance companies will "sell" this info to other companies therefore permanently screwing yourself by ever giving them a "peek"

[mitchblue]

Does a better credit score give you better rates? And what if two people are on car insurance, average them?

[surferchris]

Agreed.

[FroggieMom]

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@mitchblue wrote:

Does a better credit score give you better rates? And what if two people are on car insurance, average them?

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Yes mitchblue, a better score lowers your rates...if you live in a state that allows your score to be used as a basis for insurance.  As far as the multiple ppl on 1 policy question...the person whose name is given for the policy to be written under( i.e. name the bill comes in) is the one whose score is used.  The other people on the policy are just listed as drivers under the policy.

[Anonymous]

I have a bit of experience with this topic.

A few years ago, our company decided to begin tracking our employee's driving in our company vehicles.  In general, they were not tracked closely:  however, certain alert limits were enforced (for example, if you are speeding 15mph or more over the posted limit, an email goes to your supervisor and the owners of the company).  

At first, everyone was very against it:  "Big Brother" was mentioned a few times.  And we got many alerts in the first few months.  However, as time passed, we got less and less alerts.  Our employees were becoming trained to avoid the alert defining behavior while driving.

I do believe that we as a company are safer overall with this trend in behavior.

Now, would the same thing happen en masse to the public?  I believe it would:  if your everyday driving habits, not just those when you get caught, affected your car insurance rates, I believe in general everyone would drive a little safer.  And that benefits everyone:  few crashes = fewer claims and hopefully, lower premiums.

In general, I believe I am a pretty safe driver (and my record shows this:  last time I got a speeding ticket was 2010) and that in general, a device like this wouldn't affect me much.  As usual, I think the people who are most upset are the ones that have the most to lose.  That is, of course, my opinion.  /flame suit on