Driving the Future
17th July 2024
Your driving habits might be secretly influencing more than just your road safety—they could be impacting your wallet, too. While everyone knows about credit scores, fewer are aware of the existence and potential consequences of a driver score. This score reflects various aspects of your driving behavior, including how often you brake suddenly, exceed speed limits, use your phone while driving, or operate your vehicle late at night. Auto insurance companies have increasingly been leveraging this data to adjust insurance rates, aiming for a more accurate reflection of the risk posed by individual drivers.
In the past, for rather obvious reasons, auto insurers struggled to encourage consumers to participate in usage-based insurance plans, which monitor driving behaviors to adjust rates accordingly. Consequently, the industry has adopted alternative methods to gather driving data, such as collaborating with automakers or utilizing existing smartphone apps already in use by drivers. Despite the widespread collection of such data, many individuals remain unaware of the extent to which their driving behaviors are being monitored by insurance companies.
The implications of such data collection extend far beyond insurance rates, touching upon broader concerns surrounding personal freedom and privacy. Recent legislative efforts, such as the mandate for new cars to be equipped with a “kill switch” feature by 2026, raise significant questions about government control over vehicles and the potential misuse of such technology.