(b) Limitations on Information Retrieval-
(1) OWNERSHIP OF DATA- Any data in an event data recorder required
under part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, regardless of
when the passenger motor vehicle in which it is installed was
manufactured, is the property of the owner, or in the case of a leased
vehicle, the lessee of the passenger motor vehicle in which the data
recorder is installed.
(2) PRIVACY- Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may
not be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of the
motor vehicle in which the recorder is installed unless--
(A) a court authorizes retrieval of the information in furtherance of
a legal proceeding;
(B) the owner or lessee consents to the retrieval of the information
for any purpose, including the purpose of diagnosing, servicing, or
repairing the motor vehicle;
(C) the information is retrieved pursuant to an investigation or
inspection authorized under section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49,
United States Code, and the personally identifiable information of the
owner, lessee, or driver of the vehicle and the vehicle identification
number is not disclosed in connection with the retrieved information;
or
(D) the information is retrieved for the purpose of determining the
need for, or facilitating, emergency medical response in response to a
motor vehicle crash.
You're wondering, "section 1131(a) or 30166 of title 49"? That's the NTSB. Highway safety investigations.
For perspective: had this standard not been pushed federally, the private sector could probably do far worse; your (mandated, and reasonably so!) car insurance influences all sorts of standards on the vehicles we drive.
23.1.23.44 (Page 198 of 301) "Your use of this vehicle grants us your irrevocable and permanent consent to download, transmit, or otherwise obtain the information contained in the onboard data recorder, and to share that data with third parties, including but not limited to law enforcement (without a court order), and marketing companies."
Civil liberties are under attack on so many fronts, it seems like the few who cared initially are punch drunk. This is such a painfully bad idea on so many levels. Here's a list:
1. This adds cost without adding value to the consumer of the product.
2. The only value add is the ability of a democratic government run by the people...to track its people.
3. We already carry cell phones and use facebook. Do you really to build a whole new physical platform to get this done? Can you do it better than the cell phone providers and facebook?
4. We're not deep enough in debt yet? Want me to skip to the end game and just cut out my liver and hand it to you?
Every day I read HN and politico. I think politico is destroying things faster than HN is building them.
I want to see a PG post titled "Lets Hack Washington". I think the RIAA is too small a target.
I'm interested in preserving civil liberties, but it's tough when there's so much misinformation out there.
I have to fact check everything, and frequently find these alarmist articles to have nothing behind them. If the powers-that-be are conspiring against us, a big part of their methodology must be blowing all this smoke in our faces so that whenever we see a "big brother" or conspiracy story we immediately assume it's false.
I'd like more facts in articles like this, e.g. the specific wording in the proposed law that requires transmission, not just recording, of data.
I think it's time to be clear about what the concern is here, because it's become a bit of a cottage industry to call out provocative headlines, wave your arms around a bit, and then claim the readers are being manipulated. Kind of "Nothing to see here, folks. Please move along."
What we've learned through repeated experience is that data collection always leads to some future configuration that we are not happy with. Maybe it's advertisers tracking our every move on the web. Maybe it's the police getting all of our cell phone records simply by filling out a form. Perhaps it's the government tracking all international calls. Maybe it's the cops taking COTS GPS devices and using them to track cars without a warrant. Whatever. The pattern is clear: one day we start collecting data. Somewhere down the road somebody starts using that data in a way we do not like. Big Data is simply too attractive to too many entities to leave alone.
While the cops angle is the one that's most emotional, my money says the real players behind the scenes here are the insurance companies. Initially, the spin will be for accident litigation, but within a few years they'll have "collecting any relevant data" clauses in all their new car insurance policies. And then they'll be able to see exactly how you drive. Insurance companies are already trying to do this voluntarily. I think Progressive has some kind of Orwellian name for it like "Safe Driver Program" or something. Don't know. All I know is that whenever I see their commercials it reminds me of how stupid they think their customers are.
It's a fair cop to say that many of these stories are overblown, emotional, and manipulative. But that's a far cry from saying they are useless. The problem here is trying to guess a future world in which this goes south. For every ten guesses, maybe one is close. So looking at it from that angle, what a terrible track record! But looking at it from the proper (in my opinion) angle, the problem is simply one of style. Nobody wants to read a long-winded discussion of the problems here, but everybody will click on "The police are checking your underwear every night using your iPad!" stories. Simply because that's the nature of the business doesn't mean there aren't also serious concerns.
If anyone is wondering about the Progressive device I can give some information. My girlfriend actually asked for one.
They gave her this thing that she plugs into her car's diagnostic port. The incentive is that if an insured driver agrees to use the thing and wants to "prove" they are a good driver they can. In return the user gets an insurance discount if their driving stats are good.
The little object does something very basic: It counts the number of "hard stops" in every trip and uses cellphone networks to report the data. People can then go look up the stats online. 2 hard stops for this trip, 7 for this trip, etc. It's neat to see your stats.
Eventually it turns into a sort of game to eliminate the hard stops from your driving routine. You pay more attention to driving because of it and therefore become a more attentive driver.
At the end of 6 months you send the device back and your insurance is adjusted (or not).
This is a huge win-win for software making people behave better:
1. Girlfriend gets a lower insurance rate
2. Progressive has evidence she is not an insane driver
3. Most interestingly, the device has forced her to be (seemingly) permanently more conscious about her driving and has made her a better driver. Not only does the device find bad drivers, but it can convince many to become better drivers, possibly without them realizing it!
Literally software has consciously and unconsciously made her into a better driver and literally every party involved (her, progressive, people near her on the road) are better off for her having used this device.
~~~
All of that is good, as far as I can tell. But all of it was optional, too, and I understand that the topic at hand involves what happens when it becomes less-than-optional. It is not hard to envision a future where it will be impossible to get affordable insurance if you opt out.
The "cops" have very little to do with this. You're right: this is mostly about insurers, and to a lesser extent based on recommendations from a long, elaborate study by the NTSB about the utility of EDR devices.
So it would be helpful if, while recognizing the implications of EDRs to law enforcement and the 4th Amendment, we made sure we kept the right framing.
For those who still like the cops angle, I'll do a bit of wild speculation. Once you sign your driving record over to your insurance company, you no longer own it, do you? So they could just repackage your detailed driving record and sell it to any interested third parties through a shell company. This is close to the same model the cell phone companies are using. You end up with warrant-free observation of citizens at a very detailed level without the government directly have any kind of discussion at all about your rights.
I imagine if this trend continues we'll see "packagers", intermediary companies that assemble packages of just about everything there is to know about you and formatting it in a nice timelime -- public posts, blogs, travel records, phone call records, etc -- perhaps with an ongoing subscription service for those folks you want to keep close tabs on. It's a very interesting product idea. "Joe got up, tweeted about the football game last night, then posted this comment on HN. After driving to the gym at 10 mph over the speed limit, he called his mistress for 15 minutes...."
I think Progressive has some kind of Orwellian name for it like "Safe Driver Program" or something.
It's called Snapshot, and that program's the main reason I chose Progressive. I very much appreciate that there's an insurance company that agrees that I should be able to get a lower rate if I can prove that I'm a more prudent driver. Sure, they gotta collect some data on my driving habits first. But how the heck else am I supposed to demonstrate to them that I have safer driving habits?
Personally, I think I'd have to be stupid to not take them up on the offer.
I'm looking for a line to draw between acceptable sharing/collection of data and non-acceptable sharing/collection of data. I think there is a line somewhere around "personally identifiable". Looking at the data elements currently recorded (or, I guess, officially recorded), it looks very dry and non-identifiable. Not necessarily fully-anonymized, though.
I think I would be okay with this information being aggregated, analyzed, and even sold to insurance companies (perhaps even marketers, why not?).
But as soon as the data is being shuffled around with personally identifiable information attached to it, I agree with you.
Is there a better line between acceptable and non-acceptable?
> All I know is that whenever I see their commercials it reminds me of how stupid they think their customers are
I haven't looked into Progressive's program in particular, but car insurance is a huge information asymmetry problem. If I think I'm a better-than-average driver (thanks to Dunning-Kruger, most people do), then I'd benefit from my insurance company knowing more about my driving habits. Just because you value your privacy above the potential savings doesn't mean everybody who would prefer the savings is stupid.
"the primary function of the black box devices would be to record..."
Ok.
"...and transmit data"
Wait, what?
Are there any further details on how this is supposedly going to work? Do the boxes have built-in cellular modems with permanently-activated SIMs? What network are they connecting to? Where are they transmitting the data? Who maintains the servers?
Transmitting black-box data is a huge leap beyond simply recording it.
In legal terms transmitted can just mean downloaded after an accident.
One computer company famously had an OS that met a US top security classification which required that all user events were logged. There was no way of reading these logs - but the security standard only required that there were logs, it didn't say anything about extracting them!
It does not actually require transmission, as others have noted. That BS was added by BGR to increase rageviews.
The law merely requires that black boxes be interoperable with specified tools for reading from black boxes, i.e., by incorporating a standard data transfer protocol (USB, Bluetooth, etc.).
Can anybody find the part of the text of the legislation that requires transmission?
Skimming the table of contents and looking through SEC. 31406. VEHICLE EVENT DATA RECORDERS I couldn't find it. I could only find requirements to record data, not transmit it.
Event data recorders are already in almost all new cars. They record what was going on just before and just after something causes the airbags to trigger, and in the event of any sort of severe crash, the accident investigators will download the data from the box. The privacy implications are mild.
This repost of a repost of a repost of a reposted blog article is useless and needs downmodding.
If the primary use for these really is to help find the car in an event of an accident then why are there penalties in place for circumventing the tracking. Shouldn't this be as politically controversial as forcing me to buy health insurance?
No, the primary purpose of these is to determine the events that lead up to an accident. The penalty is because the only people with an economic incentive to remove the boxes are the ones likely to cause accidents.
"While the primary function of the black box devices would be to record and transmit data that could be used to assist a driver and passengers in the event of an accident..."
I'm not even convinced the primary use case is helpful. Most people have cell phones nowadays, and sometimes systems like OnStar. Furthermore, who is going to handle the data (storage, responses, etc.)? How much money are we going to spend on this? Scary monitoring implications aside, this seems like a terrible idea.
While the common meaning of the word 'transmit' generally implies wireless communication nowadays, it can also be used to mean any transfer of information - wireless, wired, even written letters sent over snail mail. The text of this bill uses the word 14 times, and in almost all of them, it's clear that the latter meaning is the intended one. It's used only once in reference to these black boxes, in a section that starts with:
Data recorded or transmitted by such a data recorder may not
be retrieved by a person other than the owner or lessee of
the motor vehicle in which the recorder is installed unless--
And proceeds to list a bunch of limitations that all sound fine to me. It's essentially saying that the police need a warrant to retrieve the data (duh), and that if you rent a car, the car's owner can't use the black box to monitor you without written consent.
I see nothing in there to imply that these devices must transmit wirelessly. Much more likely, the device will transmit data the same way an airplane's black box does - via some sort of physical port that you have to plug into.
The bill does not require event data records to transmit anything. The word "transmit" in the subsection of the bill pertaining to event data recorders is a restrictive clause; the effect is that if your box happens to transmit anything, those transmissions are covered by the privacy provisions of the bill.
Section 31406 of this bill says that "Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder".
and you'll notice that all of the "data elements" captured are regarding velocity/acceleration, air bags and seat belts. There is nothing about the actual driver/occupants (except maybe how many occupants and in what seats) or location (gps tracking).
In fact there is a specific note in this CFR:
These data can help provide a better understanding of
the circumstances in which crashes and injuries occur.
NOTE: EDR data are recorded by your vehicle only if a
non-trivial crash situation occurs; no data are recorded
by the EDR under normal driving conditions and no
personal data (e.g., name, gender, age, and crash
location) are recorded. However, other parties, such as
law enforcement, could combine the EDR data with the
type of personally identifying data routinely acquired
during a crash investigation.
Here are further limitations as outlined in Section of 31406 of the linked bill: [EDIT: removed as `tptacek` already linked to this, see above]
So, is there anything in here to get in a big fuss over? Maybe, but I don't see it.
Should we still keep a rational eye on it and make sure it stays this way? Absolutely.
On a related note, did anybody else cringe a bit when they noticed the original article came from infowars.com?
I noticed BGR's paranoid stance last time I read an article there. I don't remember the subject matter, but it too was linked to infowars.com. I cringe every time I see an article citing that site.
And yeah, the bill looks harmless to me. Just an EDR with no requirement for wireless transmission, and no identifying information. And when I saw the section on ownership I was pretty satisfied.
I could see this data being required by the insurance companies though.
They're actually a new initiative provided by the 1 insurance company, fitted to cars owned by young drivers. The data indicates your driving style in an attempt to bring car insurance down for more responsible young drivers. There's even an online dashboard to track your own info.
It's actually been well received especially since normal yearly insurance costs for teenage boys can be 3x the price of your first car!!!
I think the box is a fine idea - without the GPS. GPS speed limit data is wrong often enough in any case; IMO decent accelerometer data should be more than enough to correlate to aggressive driving.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
A car transponder I would like to see is one that coordinates self-driving cars to eliminate traffic congestion. You can do a rough version of this by reading traffic reports, but finer grained decisions would require something invasive like this. I care about my privacy, but I think privacy would lose over the safety and convenience such a system would provide.
If someone does stupid things with the car and has an accident it is going to be recorded.
This is not a problem if you don't do stupid things.
Is going to take less than a megabyte to record an entire day(I use smartphones to record inertial movements), and everything is already on place on cars accelerometers, gyros, gps, and 3d compass(plus tacometers and maps).
They even can add microphones to the mixture(from the hands free phone system).
The problem in USA is the Patriot Act, every info the government takes about you should be clear, and it is not, they want to spy on you and they have no limits.
The problem is also the facebooks: "give us your inertial information and you will have a discount, or a free lollipop, or your friends will be able to know were you are driving".
This will happen, maybe it is a good thing. We need the wrong things that could happen with technology to happen fast so people develop antibodies as they do with every new tech.
Isn't this just like putting GPS on everyone's cars without a warrant and then giving access to authorities to that information? Didn't the Supreme Court decide that's unconstitutional?
The supreme court decided it was unconstitutional when does as an unsupervised action of the executive branch. The action is in principle legal, but requires a warrant. The warrant is a check vs. a different branch of government. This is a law passed by the legislature, so that analysis doesn't hold. As long as the executive branch stays inside the boundaries set by the law, the checks are in place.
That doesn't mean that it's clearly constitutional either, just that the basis for the court decision isn't applicable here.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
For perspective: had this standard not been pushed federally, the private sector could probably do far worse; your (mandated, and reasonably so!) car insurance influences all sorts of standards on the vehicles we drive.
[+] [-] buff-a|14 years ago|reply
23.1.23.44 (Page 198 of 301) "Your use of this vehicle grants us your irrevocable and permanent consent to download, transmit, or otherwise obtain the information contained in the onboard data recorder, and to share that data with third parties, including but not limited to law enforcement (without a court order), and marketing companies."
[+] [-] barrkel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] siphor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] johnnyg|14 years ago|reply
1. This adds cost without adding value to the consumer of the product.
2. The only value add is the ability of a democratic government run by the people...to track its people.
3. We already carry cell phones and use facebook. Do you really to build a whole new physical platform to get this done? Can you do it better than the cell phone providers and facebook?
4. We're not deep enough in debt yet? Want me to skip to the end game and just cut out my liver and hand it to you?
Every day I read HN and politico. I think politico is destroying things faster than HN is building them.
I want to see a PG post titled "Lets Hack Washington". I think the RIAA is too small a target.
[+] [-] adnam|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brlewis|14 years ago|reply
I have to fact check everything, and frequently find these alarmist articles to have nothing behind them. If the powers-that-be are conspiring against us, a big part of their methodology must be blowing all this smoke in our faces so that whenever we see a "big brother" or conspiracy story we immediately assume it's false.
I'd like more facts in articles like this, e.g. the specific wording in the proposed law that requires transmission, not just recording, of data.
[+] [-] wusher|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grecy|14 years ago|reply
By very definition of the capitalist society, no.
The only reason you exist in the wheel is to spend money, so of course more and more creative ways to do so will always be found.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|14 years ago|reply
What we've learned through repeated experience is that data collection always leads to some future configuration that we are not happy with. Maybe it's advertisers tracking our every move on the web. Maybe it's the police getting all of our cell phone records simply by filling out a form. Perhaps it's the government tracking all international calls. Maybe it's the cops taking COTS GPS devices and using them to track cars without a warrant. Whatever. The pattern is clear: one day we start collecting data. Somewhere down the road somebody starts using that data in a way we do not like. Big Data is simply too attractive to too many entities to leave alone.
While the cops angle is the one that's most emotional, my money says the real players behind the scenes here are the insurance companies. Initially, the spin will be for accident litigation, but within a few years they'll have "collecting any relevant data" clauses in all their new car insurance policies. And then they'll be able to see exactly how you drive. Insurance companies are already trying to do this voluntarily. I think Progressive has some kind of Orwellian name for it like "Safe Driver Program" or something. Don't know. All I know is that whenever I see their commercials it reminds me of how stupid they think their customers are.
It's a fair cop to say that many of these stories are overblown, emotional, and manipulative. But that's a far cry from saying they are useless. The problem here is trying to guess a future world in which this goes south. For every ten guesses, maybe one is close. So looking at it from that angle, what a terrible track record! But looking at it from the proper (in my opinion) angle, the problem is simply one of style. Nobody wants to read a long-winded discussion of the problems here, but everybody will click on "The police are checking your underwear every night using your iPad!" stories. Simply because that's the nature of the business doesn't mean there aren't also serious concerns.
[+] [-] simonsarris|14 years ago|reply
They gave her this thing that she plugs into her car's diagnostic port. The incentive is that if an insured driver agrees to use the thing and wants to "prove" they are a good driver they can. In return the user gets an insurance discount if their driving stats are good.
The little object does something very basic: It counts the number of "hard stops" in every trip and uses cellphone networks to report the data. People can then go look up the stats online. 2 hard stops for this trip, 7 for this trip, etc. It's neat to see your stats.
Eventually it turns into a sort of game to eliminate the hard stops from your driving routine. You pay more attention to driving because of it and therefore become a more attentive driver.
At the end of 6 months you send the device back and your insurance is adjusted (or not).
This is a huge win-win for software making people behave better:
1. Girlfriend gets a lower insurance rate
2. Progressive has evidence she is not an insane driver
3. Most interestingly, the device has forced her to be (seemingly) permanently more conscious about her driving and has made her a better driver. Not only does the device find bad drivers, but it can convince many to become better drivers, possibly without them realizing it!
Literally software has consciously and unconsciously made her into a better driver and literally every party involved (her, progressive, people near her on the road) are better off for her having used this device.
~~~
All of that is good, as far as I can tell. But all of it was optional, too, and I understand that the topic at hand involves what happens when it becomes less-than-optional. It is not hard to envision a future where it will be impossible to get affordable insurance if you opt out.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
So it would be helpful if, while recognizing the implications of EDRs to law enforcement and the 4th Amendment, we made sure we kept the right framing.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|14 years ago|reply
I imagine if this trend continues we'll see "packagers", intermediary companies that assemble packages of just about everything there is to know about you and formatting it in a nice timelime -- public posts, blogs, travel records, phone call records, etc -- perhaps with an ongoing subscription service for those folks you want to keep close tabs on. It's a very interesting product idea. "Joe got up, tweeted about the football game last night, then posted this comment on HN. After driving to the gym at 10 mph over the speed limit, he called his mistress for 15 minutes...."
[+] [-] bunderbunder|14 years ago|reply
It's called Snapshot, and that program's the main reason I chose Progressive. I very much appreciate that there's an insurance company that agrees that I should be able to get a lower rate if I can prove that I'm a more prudent driver. Sure, they gotta collect some data on my driving habits first. But how the heck else am I supposed to demonstrate to them that I have safer driving habits?
Personally, I think I'd have to be stupid to not take them up on the offer.
[+] [-] thebigshane|14 years ago|reply
I think I would be okay with this information being aggregated, analyzed, and even sold to insurance companies (perhaps even marketers, why not?).
But as soon as the data is being shuffled around with personally identifiable information attached to it, I agree with you.
Is there a better line between acceptable and non-acceptable?
[+] [-] paulgb|14 years ago|reply
I haven't looked into Progressive's program in particular, but car insurance is a huge information asymmetry problem. If I think I'm a better-than-average driver (thanks to Dunning-Kruger, most people do), then I'd benefit from my insurance company knowing more about my driving habits. Just because you value your privacy above the potential savings doesn't mean everybody who would prefer the savings is stupid.
[+] [-] mortenjorck|14 years ago|reply
Ok.
"...and transmit data"
Wait, what?
Are there any further details on how this is supposedly going to work? Do the boxes have built-in cellular modems with permanently-activated SIMs? What network are they connecting to? Where are they transmitting the data? Who maintains the servers?
Transmitting black-box data is a huge leap beyond simply recording it.
[+] [-] excuse-me|14 years ago|reply
One computer company famously had an OS that met a US top security classification which required that all user events were logged. There was no way of reading these logs - but the security standard only required that there were logs, it didn't say anything about extracting them!
[+] [-] rprasad|14 years ago|reply
The law merely requires that black boxes be interoperable with specified tools for reading from black boxes, i.e., by incorporating a standard data transfer protocol (USB, Bluetooth, etc.).
[+] [-] tokenadult|14 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3863555
The submitted article is just passing on the content of an Infowars post
http://www.infowars.com/mandatory-big-brother-black-boxes-in...
but the true primary source for this story is one of the United States federal government sources, for example
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s1813/text
with the text of the legislation.
[+] [-] brlewis|14 years ago|reply
Skimming the table of contents and looking through SEC. 31406. VEHICLE EVENT DATA RECORDERS I couldn't find it. I could only find requirements to record data, not transmit it.
[+] [-] jellicle|14 years ago|reply
This repost of a repost of a repost of a reposted blog article is useless and needs downmodding.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sili|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EiZei|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jen_h|14 years ago|reply
Here's the source:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:3:./temp/~c112n8J...:
[+] [-] krober|14 years ago|reply
I'm not even convinced the primary use case is helpful. Most people have cell phones nowadays, and sometimes systems like OnStar. Furthermore, who is going to handle the data (storage, responses, etc.)? How much money are we going to spend on this? Scary monitoring implications aside, this seems like a terrible idea.
[+] [-] bunderbunder|14 years ago|reply
I see nothing in there to imply that these devices must transmit wirelessly. Much more likely, the device will transmit data the same way an airplane's black box does - via some sort of physical port that you have to plug into.
[+] [-] tptacek|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrismealy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebigshane|14 years ago|reply
Here is CFR part 563 of title 49: http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid...
and you'll notice that all of the "data elements" captured are regarding velocity/acceleration, air bags and seat belts. There is nothing about the actual driver/occupants (except maybe how many occupants and in what seats) or location (gps tracking).
In fact there is a specific note in this CFR:
Here are further limitations as outlined in Section of 31406 of the linked bill: [EDIT: removed as `tptacek` already linked to this, see above]So, is there anything in here to get in a big fuss over? Maybe, but I don't see it.
Should we still keep a rational eye on it and make sure it stays this way? Absolutely.
On a related note, did anybody else cringe a bit when they noticed the original article came from infowars.com?
[+] [-] trebor|14 years ago|reply
And yeah, the bill looks harmless to me. Just an EDR with no requirement for wireless transmission, and no identifying information. And when I saw the section on ownership I was pretty satisfied.
I could see this data being required by the insurance companies though.
[+] [-] helen842000|14 years ago|reply
They're actually a new initiative provided by the 1 insurance company, fitted to cars owned by young drivers. The data indicates your driving style in an attempt to bring car insurance down for more responsible young drivers. There's even an online dashboard to track your own info.
It's actually been well received especially since normal yearly insurance costs for teenage boys can be 3x the price of your first car!!!
http://www.co-operativeinsurance.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/128...
[+] [-] barrkel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fleitz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedsuo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistercow|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johngalt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rollypolly|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgottenpaswrd|14 years ago|reply
This is not a problem if you don't do stupid things.
Is going to take less than a megabyte to record an entire day(I use smartphones to record inertial movements), and everything is already on place on cars accelerometers, gyros, gps, and 3d compass(plus tacometers and maps).
They even can add microphones to the mixture(from the hands free phone system).
The problem in USA is the Patriot Act, every info the government takes about you should be clear, and it is not, they want to spy on you and they have no limits.
The problem is also the facebooks: "give us your inertial information and you will have a discount, or a free lollipop, or your friends will be able to know were you are driving".
This will happen, maybe it is a good thing. We need the wrong things that could happen with technology to happen fast so people develop antibodies as they do with every new tech.
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajross|14 years ago|reply
That doesn't mean that it's clearly constitutional either, just that the basis for the court decision isn't applicable here.
[+] [-] rollypolly|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3mb3r|14 years ago|reply
I'm not very well versed with the political process in the US but why aren't these bill ever discussed (or voted on) before they are passed.
Doesn't the public get to vote on these important issues?
(By the way, I come from a country where I don't get to vote on individual bills. Just thought things were slightly better in America.)