The motion sensors in your phone are able to pull enough information to determine, with high accuracy, whether or not you’re the one behind the wheel.
(X) Doubt
Motion sensors don’t provide localization. Gps on cellphones are only really accurate to a few dozen meters.
You can couple gps and motion (and changes in gps location) to fudge it. Which is why when you diverge off the route navigation provides… it takes it a moment to figure it out. In the display, they “know” you’re on the road so it doesn’t have to be that accurate, they just guess what lane you’re in based on direction and such.
They’re certainly not going to know what seat you’re in.
doesn’t need to, nor does localisation matter for this topic.
it’s a matter of centrifugal forces on turns.
How do centrifugal forces determine which seat you’re sitting in inside of a car? Everyone in the car is going to be experiencing the same forces.
He is correct that the forces are different. The equation for centripetal force is Fc = Mv2/R.
Radius is the distance from the focal point, and each seat will be different distances.
So he is technically correct that seat position could be calculated in perfect conditions with accurate measurements.
But none of the data that reaches this service will be remotely accurate or complete enough to make that determination. It will only have one passengers phone data, and even if it collected everyones phone data, phone sensors have a margin of error well above what the difference would be. GPS data is only even marginally accurate up to something like 6ft, and really not even then. Then cars have a lot of other factors like suspension and compression in seats, etc, that would absorb enough of the forces to muddy the data even if accurate sensors were everywhere.
Tl;dr; another cocky person that took a few physics courses but walked away with a poor understanding of real world applications talking out their ass.
doubt, but I’d believe it.
If we can tell if we are in the front or backseat due to how it feels when you go around corners and such, so can your phone.
driver side vs passenger would be the same deal.
of course, this is presuming the phone is on your person. Which, if you weren’t driving - it would be.
But this kind of thing is ripe for unintended consequences at best and flat out bad data at worst.
When I drive I put my phone in the center so I can see the map. If me and my passenger’s phones are in the center, who is marked as driving when I get into an accident?
From there, why stop at one phone? Let’s put several phones in the back seat, including mine. Hell, let’s have a burner phone that I use only for driving that has a throw away account. Or let’s go back to old fashioned maps and GPS devices while our phones are turned off. Meanwhile, at home, I’ve spun up a virtual device where it is very peacefully driving a route. Perfectly. Then I have another virtual device that is driving a different route on the other side of the world driving erratically.
These companies are forgetting that the data from phones are data from devices, not people. If you’re going to spy on me, I’m going to make you fucking earn it.
“when i drive i put my phone in the center”
that’s my point. Or a holder of some kind.
as opposed to passengers who basically never put their phones in the center console.
especially for a taxi or uber. That would be insane.
again: the question is: are you a driver or a passenger? And I’m saying that that distinction is very plausible to make.
if your sole goal is to make it harder to tell in an accident, sure. This is just sensor data, not clairvoyance.
My friend keeps her phone in a purse, which she puts on the floor of the passenger side whether she is driving or a passenger sitting shotgun. It’s always in the same place. When we take Ubers she usually sits in the middle so she can see, and puts the purse between her feet. Thus her phone is almost never on her person in the car.
I suspect this is true for a lot of people who use purses or other bags as every day carry. Or perhaps it’s actually in the passenger seat, lots of people use that for bags when driving solo.
So while it may be true for you that your phone is on you while a passenger, that’s a ton of people it isn’t true for at all, who would then be in the “bad data” camp.
right, but your friend doesn’t put their purse in back seat if they’re sitting in the front, or visa versa, right?
no person driving should have their phone on them when they’re driving, so it’s an easy spot to exclude. The rest is logic, sensors and probability.
Why wouldn’t I have my phone on me while driving? Where else would it be?
in a phone holder attached to your windscreen or vent.
It’s tempting to opt for telematics/black box insurance because of the initial cheaper prices but the privacy violations and potential downsides make it not worth it.
You can be the best defensive driver in the world but sometimes you’re just going to have to brake hard to avoid an object that may jump on you, dinging your driving score and raising your premiums.
Contrary to what this post’s image says, I’m reading online that these apps aren’t perfect at differentiating between who’s a driver and who’s a passenger.
Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record.
Last week a squirrel decided it didn’t want to live anymore and jumped into my way while I was driving. It was on an empty slow street at night so I was safely able brake hard to avoid killing the poor thing. If I had spyware insurance they would’ve dinged me for it.
I’ll preface this by saying this shady shit gets all my hate.
It’s tempting to opt for telematics/black box insurance because of the initial cheaper prices but the privacy violations and potential downsides make it not worth it.
The overall problem here is that human psychology tends to frame this difference as a loss not a gain. Given the choice, people will see the cheaper option as the baseline, and then ask “can I afford to pay more for privacy?” instead of affirming “my privacy is not worth this discount.”
Also, those of us that have paid for insurance without such a “discount”, are likely keenly aware of the difference. For new drivers, from now to here on out, the lack of past experience presents a new baseline where this awfulness is normalized. Competition between insurance providers won’t help us here since the “privacy free” option is still profitable and is enticing for new customers (read: younger, poorer). So it’ll take some kind of law, collective action, or government intervention to make this go away.
Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record. […] If I had spyware insurance they would’ve dinged me for it.
I think this is the bigger problem. If someone has the data an insurance company wants, you probably agreed to an EULA or signed something that makes their ownership, and its sale, legal. With the “yeah go ahead and use my data” option on the table, the machinery to do this without your knowledge is already in place. All the insurance provider has to do is buy the data from someone else. When the price is right, 1st party spyware isn’t required at all.
Competition between insurance providers won’t help us here since
the insurance firms are a cartel anyway and the price variance is more a consequence of your region and your vehicle than your carrier.
You can be the best defensive driver in the world but sometimes you’re just going to have to brake hard to avoid an object that may jump on you, dinging your driving score and raising your premiums.
If you’re the best driver in the world, you don’t need to carry insurance because the lifetime expected spending on premiums is below the lifetime insurance payments. The only reason you carry insurance is if you’re not sure whether you’re the best driver in the world.
Once your insurance knows (better than you) where you rank as a driver, they will either refuse to cover you (because costs > revenues) or raise your rates until you fall into a high risk of changing carriers (because that’s where they maximize profits). The initial discount is simply a teaser rate, while the company collects more data. The real determination of your max tolerable premium is your personal income, which is set by the value of your vehicle. All the telematics is hand-wavy bullshit. You really might be the best driver in the world, but they’ll still raise your rates if they think you’ll pay it.
The real secret to getting a lower insurance premium is to own a cheaper car (and therefore signal to your insurer that you have less money to spend on insurance).
I mean this is dystopian as hell, right?
Part of the payment for this insurance service is the policy holder’s privacy?
They’re having to preempt that people are going to be paranoid that they’re going to be flagged as some kind of ne’er-do-well
I always thought it was a huge concern to let the insurance company have gps access to my phone because it gives them exact times when I am away from my home.
Insurance companies’ more nefarious employees or employee’s friends have an exact playbook for when it’s safe to break into your home, how much money you have(based on how many and the types of cars you have policies on), how many people could be at home (insured on policy), credit rating… etc. It’s not data that you couldn’t get with a bit of research and time, but having a searchable database full of customer info makes it easy to list out hundreds of targets with little effort.
Why would you give gps access to your insurance company?
Me, on the phone with my insurance company: “No, you don’t understand! It wasn’t me driving, we just have very similar telematics!”
The insurance company: “Beep boop! I am a computer! Talking to me automatically raises your insurance premium another 5%”
