Black Boxes in Cars

As always, when the function creep of surveillance starts, it does so with apparent good intentions. Young drivers face punitive insurance premiums, so who wouldn’t be sympathetic when the insurers come up with a scheme that will help those young drivers reduce their premiums?

The smartbox is the same size as a mobile phone.

It uses satellite technology to track how, and when, young drivers are using their car.

It looks at acceleration, braking, cornering and speed, as well as times of journeys.

The information is then displayed on the policyholder’s online dashboard, where they can log on and get their rating; from five (excellent) to one (very poor).

The premium is then re-calculated every 90 days.

Driving well can get a discount of up to 11%, driving badly can cost an extra 20%.

Having seen my niece trying to get insurance –  and playing around with variables, including the sex of the driver –  saw premiums for a basic hatchback go from around £900 to over £3,000 I can see people falling for this one.

The idea is not new. About seven years ago, I guest posted on White Rose when Norwich Union proposed just this idea. In the intervening years technology has improved and a new generation of divers are nicely softened up by a combination of propaganda, easy access to private information via social networking and prohibitive premiums. So, I fully expect young drivers to take this as an opportunity to reduce those premiums.

Expect, therefore, the scheme to expand. Young drivers are the toe in the door. If they get away with monitoring them, then it is only reasonable that they will want to monitor the rest of us. Don’t be too surprised when your insurance renewal is conditional on having a monitor installed in your vehicle. And, as insurance is not only compulsory, but is subject to further crackdowns of late, what choices do we have?

23 Comments

  1. Big brother and car insurance – truly a match made in hell. Both make my blood boil.

  2. It would be so easy to use this technology to issue speeding tickets too.

    They say that they won’t share the information with the police. Of course they won’t…

  3. 6 to 6 points, 28 day ban, fine from £200 upwards. Also your next insurance quote will be double the previous one. Mortgages may be available soon.

  4. Expect, therefore, the scheme to expand.

    My brother already has one in his work van, if you go over the posted speed limit for more than 30secs it sends a report to the office via txt/email and they are straight on the phone asking why? (it is also GPS enabled to track journeys and location)
    Apparently it reduces the company’s premiums by 2/3rds and they are trying to get contracts rewritten to make infractions a disciplinary offense.

    It can also calculate reasonable distances between jobs and initial commute. anything over they get a bill for ‘private use’

  5. Actually, I don’t have a huge problem with companies using the technology to manage their drivers. Their vehicles, their rules and they do have a problem with managing risk when it comes to road vehicles.

    My approach in the past with the conflict between private use and company use was to never take the company vehicle home – that way they had no say over the commute mileage and none of my mileage was ever for private use, so I wouldn’t fall foul of the trap. Mainly this was to avoid nasty tax bills.

    It’s the intrusion into private vehicles that I have a problem with.

  6. I can see one of those unintended consequences potentially causing problems here. Remember those speed activated signs that display how fast you were going when you tripped it? Remember how some of them were attracting drivers of a certain mentality to see how high they could make the number go? This sounds like it will also be a temptation for some fuckwit to try to set a high score somewhere, perhaps having first found someone to hack the thing. Personally I’m not still sure the technology is that sound – according to satellite tracking I once tunnelled through the rock below the seabed of Port Philip Bay at well in excess of Victoria’s maximum speed limit of 110 km/h and I’ve been known to cross parts of Melbourne’s CBD so fast that you’d expect windows to have shattered in my wake. On both occasions I was actually on foot but I think the surroundings were causing the satellite signals to bounce around and confuse the unit. If the insurance industry has to deal with a lot of bad data it might not be worth their while.

    The government on the other hand, oh yeah, I’m sure they’d love it. If they’re involved and are subsidising the industry in this then we’re in trouble. If the insurance industry are on their own in this I expect whatever is the best business to win out eventually.

  7. You’re correct LR, if you don’t like it work somewhere that doesn’t have it
    I was just pointing out that it has entered companies already, it soon will be mandatory by H&S legislation, then the ground will be laid to make it compulsory for private vehicles.

  8. …then the ground will be laid to make it compulsory for private vehicles.

    And that is the line in the sand they mustn’t cross.

  9. Well in that case the world is an open prison as nobody can leave (without coming back at least).

    Not sure about your exact position on nationalised railways, but I don’t see the NHS, TV licence or state pensions etc. going away any time soon. So why not just include basic insurance in road tax? As with the NHS you can choose to get extra cover with a private company.

  10. So why not just include basic insurance in road tax?

    There’s a logic to that. I doubt that we could trust politicians to implement it properly. After all, NI was supposed to be a form of insurance at its inception.

  11. And so start a new industry in hacking the black boxes to doctor the readings.

    Black boxes can only measure physical characteristics of the car, not the stupidity factor of the driver or people outside the car.

    Most accidents occur within the speed limit with reasonable driving ability due to distraction, momentary stupidity, carelessness, or lack of attention.

    When yet another attempt to control the uncontrollable – it’s called Human nature – fails, then what? Wiring young person’s brains into some computer; electric shocks if they do this instead of that, perhaps?

    Taken into perspective, there were in 2008 640 road deaths – pedestrian, cycle, motor cycle,car – in the 16 to 24 age range.

    This is 25% of all road deaths and a small number and it and deaths in other groups has been consistent for the last 4 years.

    Overall road deaths in cars – all age groups – down by 16% in 2009 compared with 2008 to 1059. This is not a big number in a population of 60 million.

    Anyone ever heard of the law of diminishing returns? Or Stupid”s Law, expending effort disproportionate to the scale of the problem it intends to solve and will any any case return little for the effort expended?

  12. John.

    I think the Aussies have just such a system. They have an insurance disc where we have a tax disc and a standard set of third party only insurance charges, based mainly on vehicle value and the drivers record.

    Fire, theft and fully comp is bought from the private sector, which has to be competetive because there is no legal requirement that gives them a license to print money as is the case here.

  13. Almost, Maaarrghk, though it may vary from one state/territory to another. The system here in Victoria is that when I re-register the car they send me a reminder about a month in advance, though bizarrely they send me the replacement rego sticker (oblong equivalent of tax disc) with the reminder, i.e. before I’ve actually paid for it, along with a note saying it’d be really, really wrong to use the rego sticker without giving them money first. Not really relevant but I mention it as an example of how fucking weird government operations can be here. There are two parts to the fee, or rather two fees which must be paid. The first is the registration fee itself which is currently $187.40, and this is really the tax disc-ish part. The second fee is called “Transport Accident Charge” and is the compulsory third party insurance you mentioned (which incidentally is injury only – uninsured property damage is far from unknown here).

    However in Victoria at least it’s based on almost bugger all. Driver’s record and health, type and value of car, modifications, other drivers and all the other things the private insurance companies ask about are a matter of complete indifference to the TAC. All they want to know is the postcode in which the vehicle is kept, and since a postcode here usually covers a whole suburb me and probably ten thousand or more other car owners will all pay exactly the same amount. Actually it’s worse than that because I believe there are actually just three price points: one for high risk areas, one for the medium risk areas and one for Baby Bear, ah, low risk areas. My TAC renewal this year will be either $397 if I stay put, or $355 or $308 (all plus 10% insurance duty) if I moved to a medium or low area, and this would be the same whether I had an elderly 1 litre Nissan Micra and a clean licence or a bloody great V8 Falcon and more points than Steve Davis. Unless it’s being used as an emergency vehicle, taxi, or rental what it is doesn’t begin to change the TAC until you’re getting into minibuses and light goods and upwards. In short, good drivers are subsidising higher risk drivers, though at least it keeps the cost of fully comp down to a much more affordable level and probably increases the number of people who actually buy it.

    Personally I think if you’re going to have a state organised insurance fund it’d be better to make it fuel based rather than buggering around with extra charges on rego stickers or VED discs. The risk of a collision is going to be broadly proportional to the amount of driving you do – a good driver who does 50,000 miles a year is more likely to have one than even a complete dickhead who just does 500 if only because the good driver has to avoid all the other dickheads he’s going to encounter over the next 50,000 miles. It’d also mean everyone pays in proportion to their exposure, though of course any penalty apart from the legal kind for a lousy driving record or discount for a good record etc would have to be left to the private sector. It’d also mean there’d be no need to makes discs and stickers to put in the windscreen – if it’s moving under its own power it’s got fuel in it, and if its got fuel its insured. The only problem I can think of would be drive off fuel thefts from petrol stations, but I reckon they’re probably a lot rarer than uninsured cars.

  14. Well, hapless employees of Schlumberger (I think we should name the guilty) have been subject to this sort of nannying for some years. A GPS box loaded with accelerometers that beeps at you if you brake harder then the company rule, go around a corner “too fast”, break a company speed limit (note – NOT the actual limit) – all downloaded to the comapny HR spooks in la belle France chaques soir, to be scored and appended / integrated into your personnel assessment. Your location (time and place)is also scored.

    This is your personal vehicle, NOT a company vehicle.

    Look into a Schlumberger car park, and you will see them regimentally parked arse-in, as to be caught doing the dastardly nose in position – is a sackable “offence”

    An acquaintance of mine resigned after an IT goon turned up at his dwelling (while he was away) and fitted said box to *his* motor.

    These are the goons who were one of the hands up inside the sock puppet of UK ID cards, they won’t give up – but… they’re ghouls that don’t like the light.

  15. Despicable though this is, if they own the vehicles, they can do as they please. The answer is to never have a company vehicle (and as for what the box records, John B’s comment nails how useless the idea actually is). There are two upsides to keeping one’s own independence with vehicles (three if you count vehicle choice); not only are you not clobbered for tax, but it is your vehicle and the company has no control over it or how you drive it. If Schlumberger are doing this to personally owned vehicles without prior consent of the owner they are committing trespass. I would never, under any circumstances allow an employer to put anything onto or in a vehicle of mine. Ever.

    Update: Having had a look for more detail all I can find is references to their own vehicles, not privately owned employees’ vehicles.

  16. The incident occurred in Asia, UK rules obviously didn’t apply. My understanding is that it was indeed the family people carrier – it was at least 4 years ago. The chap involved blew a gasket.

    Received wisdom is that only supervisory grades were subjected to this intrusive corporate nannying. It may well be that the practice has been modified.

    Schlumberger have a history of meddling intrusively with their employees lives.

  17. I’d blow a gasket as well. Company cars is fine, personal stuff is way out of bounds.

    They aren’t the first to try this type of thing on, though. Ford were doing it at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. They would come into workers’ homes to check that they were living an appropriate lifestyle.

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