
New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums - mikro2nd
https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/18/aws_toyota_alliance/
======
taftster
And here's the thing. These types of driving habit trackers (not necessarily
new in the auto-insurance industry) are touted as a means to reduce the cost
of insurance for good drivers. But what qualifies as a "good driver" is likely
to be more like 10% of drivers. For everyone else, this won't reduce the
insurance costs at all.

It's frankly just a way for insurance companies to extort more profit from
drivers. I don't want a black box in my car of any type, even if I already
qualify for the best possible insurance rates. Your driving habits are a huge
privacy concern and we should all guard them very carefully.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> For everyone else, this won't reduce the insurance costs at all.

It will likely raise it to subsidize things, somebody else has to pay your
premium... Companies are never in the business of making less money.

~~~
lotsofpulp
>It will likely raise it to subsidize things, somebody else has to pay your
premium

I don't know what this means, but an insurance company can be incentivized to
lower premiums as a means to win new business. If an insurance company offered
me lower premiums in exchange for monitoring my driving, I might do it. I
already have dash cams to ensure I don't get found at fault if it isn't my
fault.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Insurance companies have been offering just this deal for years - they will
stick a GPS logger into the OBD2 port on your car, and then ask you to let
them pull data off it periodically[1].

1: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/08/14/data-
moni...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/08/14/data-monitoring-
saves-some-people-money-on-car-insurance-but-some-will-pay-more/#2f4d754d2334)

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calmworm
This removes "New Toyotas" from my list of potential next vehicles, though
it's likely just a matter of time before all new vehicles have a direct link
with insurance companies.

~~~
novok
Even toyotas sold today have cellular modems that track your location, it's
called "toyota safety connect". There is no obvious way to turn it off either.

~~~
tomc1985
I imagine that you can still take the car to a mechanic and ask them to remove
the sim card to disconnect the system

~~~
bradly
At least for Volvo they are used for by their service mechanics as well, so
you will want to make sure it doesn't void any warranty claims.

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Someone1234
Insurance companies want to double dip: They want to sell insurance and profit
off of that, and then profit off of selling your personal location/habit
information on the back-end.

Even if they aren't doing it today, they want to be positioned to be in the
"data business" tomorrow. It will start out as "opt out" before becoming
normalized/expected.

Even putting aside the fact that modern vehicle's electrical systems are
already stretched thin and this is yet another constant battery drain. The
privacy implications of this cannot be ignored even if the data is
"anonymized" (not least of all because multiple sources of "anonymized" data
can be combined to bypass it entirely).

~~~
donmcronald
And you can be guaranteed the car manufacturers aren't going to be selling
them data that would let them do statistical analysis on the vehicles.

I think it'll be super anti consumer. All those systems will be used to
"prove" the driver is at fault for everything. It'll never be a mechanical
malfunction or an infrastructure issue. It'll always be the "bad" driver that
causes accidents.

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canada_dry
Part of the slippery slope that insurance companies have been trying to get
customers to willingly adopt...

Just install this safe driver app to receive _up-to_ 15% off your rate!

Soon: our company's insurer now requires all employees to install this
exercise monitoring app on their phone!

And finally: to be eligible for insurance you must submit a saliva sample.

~~~
Someone1234
> Soon: our company's insurer now requires all employees to install this
> exercise monitoring app on their phone!

Not _soon_. My employer already offers a 10% premium discount program, but you
have to take part in a monthly "healthy living" program that encourages you
can hook in your smart phone/watch/etc (you earn "points" towards your
discount, not doing so hurts your point totals and you need to do something
else privacy invading instead).

It is operated by a third party rather than my employer, but that doesn't
protect your privacy in the broad context, just protects you from additional
workplace discrimination.

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balls187
1 year from now: "Toyota AWS keys compromised due to misconfigured S3 bucket."

~~~
ryanisnan
No it would be more likely that "Millions of Toyota drivers driving data
leaked due to misconfigured S3 bucket"

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OldHand2018
Cars have been so well-built for so long that car companies doing this crap
with data (remember that Ford's outgoing CEO talked about monetizing driving
data) should cause people (that care) to just stop buying new cars. Bonus: you
don't have to agree to forced arbitration for any defects you encounter!

~~~
jkaplowitz
In much of the world, the forced arbitration clauses are illegal and
unenforceable anyway for consumer contracts (though often not when the
purchase is for business rather than consumer purposes). And there is a bill
in Congress that would apply a similar approach to the US if the Democrats
manage to take control of the federal government and don't lose their desire
to enact the law once they gain the ability to do so.

I admit I'm not sure what the situation would be if I buy a new personal
Toyota in my current residence (Quebec, Canada - forced consumer arbitration
is illegal) and then later import it into the US as part of a move there. But
I'm hoping I'd avoid the trap.

At least the current version of the congressional bill is retroactive in its
restoration of access to the courts. I hope that stays true in any final
version.

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tibbydudeza
It reminds me of BMW wanting to charge for add on "options" that you paid for
at delivery but after 2 years of ownership you need to re-up.

rear view camera/park distance control/cruise control (SaaS).

I guess with car sales going south they need to nickel and dime their
remaining customers.

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lykahb
It's interesting to see that most of the discussion here revolves around
effectiveness and economic impact of tracking. Ten years ago the talking point
would be about invasion to privacy. The personal privacy is vanishing not only
in practice, but as a value of the society as well.

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kylehotchkiss
Anybody know how to disable the 4G chip permanently upon buying a new car? Are
they making ECUs require the 4G chip to be active?

~~~
shakna
It's a difficult process that changes greatly from model to model, and often
comes with... Unexpected... Functionality loss.

Like for a particular VW model I'm thinking of, you need to disassemble the
entire front of the car to get at it, and it disables the seat warmer for no
obvious reason.

~~~
bleepblorp
Unless the car is phoning home to enable options you've paid for, you might be
able to evade anti-functionality issues by replacing the antenna with a dummy
load (resistor) rather than by removing the modem entirely.

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closetohome
I would say "hard pass" on this, but at some point in the future, it will no
doubt be significantly more expensive to acquire car insurance without this
kind of oversight. Ideally there would be some legislation in place that
precludes charging people extra for retaining their privacy, but I'm not
holding my breath.

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mulmen
My parents installed one of the addon driving monitors in their car to get an
insurance discount. It lasted about a month. Apparently they drive like
maniacs.

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anm89
What a nightmare. Avoiding owning a car starts to sounds better and better
every day.

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jdhn
To paraphrase Charlton Heston, you can pry my my manual transmission, non-
infotainment having car from my cold, dead hands!

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bvanderveen
Just go buy a pre-2012 Toyota, take it to a reputable independent Toyota-
specific shop in your area, and say "make it good, boss". Pay him whatever he
asks.

Then go find an insurance broker, ask them to put you in touch with someone
who can provide you with an agreed-value insurance policy. Insure the vehicle
for purchase price + what the shop changed you.

Get regular oil changes at Jiffylube, and take the car into the Toyota guy
once a year. Although it may not be flashy, you'll have a reliable, efficient
ride for many, many years.

New cars simply aren't worth the creepy factor.

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zepearl
I just bought a Volvo (but I didn't get it yet) => apparently all Volvos have
an embedded "Event Data Recorder":

 _This vehicle is equipped with an "Event Data Recorder" (EDR). Its primary
purpose is to register and record data related to traffic accidents or
collision-like situations, such as times when the airbag deploys or the
vehicle strikes an obstacle in the road. The data is recorded in order to
increase understanding of how vehicle systems work in these types of
situations. The EDR is designed to record data related to vehicle dynamics and
safety systems for a short time, usually 30 seconds or less. Etc..._ The
article is here
[https://www.volvocars.com/ph/support/manuals/xc90/2016/intro...](https://www.volvocars.com/ph/support/manuals/xc90/2016/introduction/introduction/recording-
data) (same for other models).

Personally I'm OK with that - it's not an ongoing recording of how I drive,
the data is not pushed out of the car, and it might actually help defending
myself if I have an accident and I think that I'm not guilty.

~~~
abawany
I believe these have existed in vehicles for quite a while and have been used
as evidence for/against the driver. According to [1], 85% of all vehicles in
2010 were expected to already have these things installed.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder)

~~~
zepearl
Thank you, until now I was totally unaware of such systems.

But good to have things stored locally than to have them uploaded anywhere to
then be used for some analysis (puah, probably a point to be discussed).

Personally I'm OK if used for&against the driver (from a technical
perspective, not as souce of abolute truth) if the duration of the recordings
are short.

~~~
abawany
In a defensive driving course I took in the prior decade, the instructor
informed us that these collect data in a rolling 5 minute window until an
adverse event occurs.

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tobyhinloopen
This and the DLC are the worst trends in new cars.

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propogandist
Hyundai and Genesis have been doing this with their vehicles. They offer a 3
year complimetary connected service program, which includes terms that allow
mining of car telemetry and GPS data, which is then sold to data broker
VeriRisk, who resells to insurance and other industry.

All this only screws the driver over and most people simply do not know this
is happening.

[https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hyundai-motor-
ameri...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hyundai-motor-america-
selects-verisk-for-usage-based-insurance-300630938.html)

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rayhendricks
This is bullshit and is designed to enable Amazon to allow Toyota and its
insurance “partners” to extract more money out of the average American driver.

Remember how Kroger/Safeway/friends started their loyalty programs? Just give
us your purchase data + a unique identifier and we will only charge you the
normal price not the jacked up price. This is the same thing. 20 years from
now this will be normal because most older cars will be off the road.

My guess is Give it 5 years and we’ll find out that the algorithm is unfairly
targeting minority neighborhoods and jacking up insurance rates too.

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throwaway0a5e
If the insurance companies wanted to confirm that everyone who hogged the left
lane slowly in a Prius 5-10yr ago traded up to a Tacoma any salesman could
have told them that for free.

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metric10
I wish insurers weren't so heavy handed with this technology. If it's possible
to tell if someone is a "good" or "bad" driver via this technology, why not at
least just tell the driver without the big brother BS? Many drivers might
change their habits based on this information.

I know insurers have apps that you can install on your phone or ODBC modules
you can install. Does anyone know of any way to collect this data privately
without reporting it to an insurer?

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modeless
Tesla is doing this with their new Tesla insurance product. But at least they
won't be sending the data to other insurers, since they want to keep it for
their own use.

~~~
ra7
Tesla CFO just yesterday bragged about the amount of data that's available to
collect from the car for insurance purposes [1]:

> “We’re working now on what we call Version 2 or we can call it the first
> version of our telematics product. And so really ultimately where we want to
> get to with Tesla Insurance is to be able to use the data that’s captured in
> the car, in the driving profile of the person in the car to be able to
> assess correlations and probabilities of crash and be able then to assess a
> premium on a monthly basis for that customer. And what makes this very
> exciting for us is the amount of data that is available with the customers’
> permission to use is, it’s not available in any other product or any other
> vehicle in the world. So this gives us a unique advantage in terms of
> information.”

[1] - [https://electrek.co/2020/08/18/tesla-expand-insurance-
busine...](https://electrek.co/2020/08/18/tesla-expand-insurance-business/)

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webninja
I really hope they manage to separate the brake and gas pedal technology from
the onboard computer. To the best of my understanding, there’s a central
processing unit that controls everything and can receive remote commands.

Hacking it is literally the perfect way to remotely and unsuspiciously
assassinate people. The 15CY (2015+) vehicles are all interconnected like
this.

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tibbydudeza
And also to the NSA.

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protomyth
So, how do I install a firewall on my vehicle?

~~~
shoes_for_thee
Well that'll usually be installed by the factory between the engine and
passenger compartment.

~~~
james_s_tayler
Ah touche hahaha

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rangibaby
Maybe this will lead to speed limit reform in Japan.

There is a legal requirement that the police need to prove that someone is
definitely speeding, so police and automated speed cameras both allow speeding
15-20km over posted speed limits, which means that de jure speed limits are
all set 20km under the de facto speed limit.

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djsumdog
I'm going to keep my dumb, manual transmission, non-Internet enable, 2006 WRX
for as long as humanly possible.

------
viburnum
Cars kill 35,000 people in America every year. America has over twice the
fatality rate of other rich countries.

~~~
edmundsauto
Adjusted per vehicle mile, or per capita? Is that also adjusted for
differences in types of driving (city/highway)? I don't doubt your numbers,
just want to make sure I have more clarity before I remember it.

------
senectus1
This is how automated driving becomes mainstream.

Insurance companies will classify Automated drivers as "Best drivers" and
insurance for those sorts of cars will be _really_ low compared to even
blemish free human drivers.

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apazzolini
I didn't see it in the article - does anyone know which model year this will
take effect from? I'm in the market for a new 4Runner, but that may switch to
a used model instead.

~~~
herman_toothrot
I'd like to know this too, same reason. The article sorta makes it sound like
current vehicles are already equipped with the hardware.

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novok
Need laws to force cars to go into airplane mode and for there to be no loss
of non-networked functionality if you remove their modems or go into said
airplane mode.

~~~
james_s_tayler
"cars to go into airplane mode"

That sounds so funny and ridiculous.

------
slipheen
You can typically find a guide to where any given modem is and manually remove
it, but it's increasingly difficult to do so and causes functionally
downgrades.

~~~
dylan604
Until their counter move in the cat&mouse game is to embed the radio into the
SoC. Maybe find the antenna lead and cut it?

------
adrr
I wonder if you can use CCPA deletion request to remove all the data.

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flukus
Surely this will be illegal in Europe thanks to the GDPR?

At the same time it demonstrates why laws like the GDPR are needed.

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lvs
This surveillance capitalism has to be stopped.

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mrfusion
Is this something you can turn off?

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pruthvishetty
Cue: Tesla insurance.

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marta_morena_25
I wonder how many people complaining here take their phone into the vehicle,
or use Google Maps. Sure, the data from the car (whatever is included there)
might give some additional insights, but these are very local (i.e. status of
the car and perhaps lane assist) compared to what Google/Apple already collect
anyway (i.e. the "big picture", which is far more valuable). At least here you
get something tangible out of it: Lower insurance premiums (if they were
higher, nobody would buy the freakin cars and I am pretty sure using this data
for insurance quotes must be an opt-in anyway)

~~~
taftster
There are several things wrong with your post. For one, Google/Apple selling
your driving data to an insurance company is not likely happening today. This
would be the same type of mistreatment of personal information as it would be
selling your health data to a health insurance company. Not that I know, but I
highly doubt that personal driving data is being shared with insurance
companies from big tech. If they are, this would be a huge privacy agreement
violation and would cause a massive lawsuit action against said companies.

You're also being misled to believe that these driving trackers will actually
reduce costs for drivers. In fact, they only serve as a means to raise
insurance premium on drivers that don't qualify for the absolute best rate.
Did you ever run a stop sign? 5 MPH over the speed limit? Change lanes without
signaling? This level of detail is possible with very accurate GPS and will
only serve for the insurance companies to raise rates on most drivers.

There is absolutely nothing good about this move from Toyota, and other auto
manufactures will no doubt follow suit. This will likely be yet-another-
erosion-of-privacy that only serves big business.

You should not so easily desire a "you are the product" relationship with auto
manufacturers.

~~~
lkbm
Why don't insurers just raise all rates 50% right now?

My guess is it's because there's a competitive market.

This doesn't change this. This allows for better price discrimination than our
current tables based just on age, car, neighborhood, gender, etc. This will
raise rates for high-risk drivers and lower them for low-risk drivers. If the
insurer does the first and not the latter, the latter will go to an insurer
who does.

It seems like the view here is that everyone will only do the former, but
again: why don't they do that right now? Why does the effect of competition
vanish in this case?

"Every insurer will use this technology eventually" isn't an answer. Every
insurer has accident data by age. As a result, they offer lower rates to
lower-risk age groups.

~~~
icedistilled
>age, car, neighborhood, gender

I wish. it's even worse than that.

It's priced on your credit score, so if you're poor you're screwed, and it's
priced on whether you're married too.

Here's how to get the best rates in the current system. In addition to
avoiding tickets/accidents become a 50 year old female married driver who has
an excellent credit score and drives a lower trim subaru crosstrek.

Or they could price based on actual driving behavior. Cue outrage.

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Press2forEN
Just tell me which rectangle of silicon to drill out.

