Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.
So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.
LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.
On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.
Surely theres someone who has a rasberi pi that reports fake data to this thing? Yes, insurance company, I drive like a Grandma. You’re welcome, now give me my discount.
It’d be cool if you could tap into the OBD2 dongle and find what its criteria is that denotes “rapid accelerations” or “hard braking” and them reprogram it to dampen that curve and never report more than maybe 5% less than what would trigger an acceleration or braking flag
It’s fine till you have an accident. Then your completely fucked.
Those deals, at least over here, are generally aimed at new drivers. I actually agree with them, to a level. It lets the insurance company rapidly sort the safe drivers from the idiots, and so discriminate on prices. It also trains new drivers to be safer. I remember how fearless I was when starting out. The quicker we get new drivers out of that mindset, the better.