Ugh. That reminds me of a time probably around 2012. I was working for a pretty large company, and they had our health insurance provider come in. The insurance provider was offering $100 to any employees that came in and gave a sample of blood. This was not a blood drive, they wanted samples. There was a line going down the hallway of people excited to get a benjamin. I encouraged them to get off the line because they were just going to use the data from the blood tests to raise our rates. Everybody laughed at me.

Couple months later all of our insurance rates got jacked up. Like how did people not see what was going on? Did they really think the insurance company was there to give away free money and not somehow turn a profit? Fucking bananas.

You get rid of cars and you stop designing society to accommodate the one edge case where someone lives 100miles away from a city that they have to commute by car to everyday for some reason.

You will never be able to take away someone's license for bad driving if doing so basically makes them unemployable and incapable of taking care of themselves. We need cheap, practical alternatives to cars in order to reduce the impact of bad drivers.

Obligatory US, I think the better way of filtering bad drivers is more stringent and frequent testing through the DMV (or your state's equivalent). Look at Germany, they don't mess around when it comes to licensing. I'm mid 30s, and haven't had to retest or do any form of continuing driver's education or retesting since I was 16.

It's a little trickier here in the US due to our cities being built for cars, and being without one can be a huge detriment, especially with most public transit being a shitshow. But I agree, we definitely need some mechanisms to weed out bad drivers.

Reliable public transport with a robust interstate passenger railway system coupled with a well designed intracity bus system, along with well maintained biking paths everywhere else would go a long way to getting bad drivers off the road.

We can't get bad drivers off the road when basic everyday living requires driving. There are cost effective alternatives in use across the world. America just has to learn to accept good ideas that others have pioneered.

part of me wishes there was a way to work towards getting bad drivers off of the roads.

There is: it's called zoning reform.

Make the passing grade for a driving test 20% higher than it currently is, and make everyone take a driving test every five years. You get one re-test if you fail.

And once you hit 70, driving tests every year.

Anyone who fails under the new regulations would have been causing a lot of problems on the roads.

The article alleges, though without evidence, that the tracking is just an excuse to raise rates.

A quick search didn't turn up quite the right statistics, but traffic fatalities have been seriously on the rise in the US. That probably implies higher payouts. (WP)

But also, when trackable unsafe drivers have to pay more (and trackable safe driver less), then the unsafe drivers will prefer to be untrackable. You may be on the receiving end of the recalculated actuary tables.

Untrackable might mean you get lumped with the worst actuary table in terms of risk as an unknown quantity or as a form of pressure to let them track you or as a way to create a defence moat of people (your rates will go up like these untrackable vehicles) if the government tries to intervene to stop them from basing rates to tracking.

“Cost of living”. Sure people will start getting inflation beating payrises soon.

I'm driving way safer and way less miles, combination of shorter commute and I don't want to wear my truck out driving like an ass....I'm my rate is literally doubled

I have a 17 year old car with ESP (electronic stability) and without any 'smart' stuff. I'll run it until its last breath.

It's a group thing. Because everyone around you are collectively driving like assholes, your rate goes up to compensate

False

... you think they don't? You need to read the fine print again. It's not proven where it's going, but they absolutely have the right to sell your genetic information and already do.

https://gizmodo.com/23andme-is-selling-your-data-but-not-how-you-think-1794340474

https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/23andme-sells-anonymous-dna-data-to-drug-company-for-20-million/article_ea59fe96-79df-11ee-8473-47193d62656b.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-30/23andme-will-give-gsk-access-to-consumer-dna-data

https://www.dailyjournal.com/articles/377206-23andme-accused-of-having-fire-sale-of-customer-dna-data

The usual warnings about "anonymized data" and "data aggregation" apply.

We lowkey need a database of how to airgap cars. Spying hardware started being common long enough ago that people aren't really going to be able to avoid it when buying used, unless they have the time and money to maintain a classic car.

It isn't just your driving either. They also very commonly log location and audio inside the car as well.

No data means you get the highest rates.

You can't solve systemic problems without regulations.