Ask HN: Would you trust car insurance trackers?

1 points by jerryu 3 years ago | 5 comments

So my Geico (save your 15 minutes) rate went up significantly for no reason. If I use their tracking app "Drive Easy" they are offering 20% discount (pretty significant). I thought why not?

It ALWAYS wants to see my location It wants access to my health and fitness data

I obviously can't justify the discount by giving up my privacy. My wife says I am paranoid and she doesn't see anything wrong. I am assuming most people won't.

Soon Geico (DON'T WASTE YOUR 15 MINUTES) will have everything they need. They promise they won't use the data to raise rates, only to give discounts but in few years or even sooner, they will cancel high risks and then make them pay higher rates to join. Who the hell is going to read 100 pages of terms.

All these insurance companies have apps like these.

Strongbad536 3 years ago |

We switched from Geico recently to a new insurance carrier as well because of how expensive our new rate was going to be.

Likely time to go check on a comparison site for a better rate. Sometimes Geico can try to match that if you have a new quote at a lower price, or you can just switch.

Disclosure: I work at Clearcover (https://app.clearcover.com/apply), the company my wife and I switched to, but I don't think anyone would argue with a $500/6mo rate to a $180/6mo rate (employee is discount is ~5%).

joezydeco 3 years ago |

It's also tracking your acceleration and braking, seeing what kind of driver you are. And you don't need to be a drag racing fool to trip their 'risky driver' thresholds.

mtmail 3 years ago | |

Tracking location is enough to figure out if somebody is driving to fast compared to the local speed limit. Depends on how good the map data is but I've seen this done with public GPS tracks (https://www.openstreetmap.org/traces).

joezydeco 3 years ago | | |

Didn't say fast, just aggressive. If you do jackrabbit starts out of a red light but stay under the limit, it's still an aggressive move and it's noticed.

jerryu 3 years ago |

WTF do they need access to my heart rate and fitness levels? Do you think I am being irrational?