Gadgetory

I'm guessing if I mentioned auto insurance premiums you don't exactly think tech do you but there's a coming revolution between the mobile technology that connects to your car and the way they price auto insurance that is gonna make it a tech story and that's a big interest to the smarter as well as the stingy or driver the idea is to share information about your actual driving behavior with your insurance company this is typically done electronically if that information shows that you're a lower risk than your policy assumed you would be in for a monthly premium discount now I've got your attention okay so where does this data come from well in today's modern cars there's a thing down under the dash here called an obd2 port cars since 1996 all have one of these and that has a wealth of data coming from the vehicles various sensors all the time about how you drive how much you drive and the kind of inputs you give your vehicle now a few years ago some insurance companies begin to tap into that data offering customers the ability to plug in a custom hardware dongle into that port that would gather and report information about their driving back to the insurance company but you see insurance companies don't really want to be in the hardware business that's not what they do now more recently insurance companies have begun to take advantage of the fact that first of all most of us are carrying a smartphone now which has the ability to run an app to process data to connect to the Internet do all the things that are behind usage based insurance data reporting secondly there's telematics in many cars now keys various sort of concierge and assistance systems that are wirelessly connected and managed by a telematics firm think OnStar or Lexus and forms for example State Farm is one of the insurers that have already launched a usage-based discount program that can save customers on their premiums based on their driving mileage and or some other behaviors now by whatever technology this information gets back to your insurance company and by the way it's always voluntary it can reflect a lot of parameters of how you use your car what time of day do you drive a lot real late at night when accidents are more common how is your average speed do you break and corner hard do you buckle up every time all this data by the way is typically gathered already by your vehicle's black box what's new here is sharing it with your insurance company and the new technologies that make that easy ok so you can save some bucks on your insurance what's in it for your insurance company first of all this kind of program will tend to attract low risk drivers I mean you'd be a fool to engage in more revelation of your driving behavior if you're a high-risk driver secondly it gives the insurance company more data about their customers there's no business out there that doesn't want that and thirdly I think it's interesting path toward the insurance companies becoming providers of wireless services in the car and it's not much of a reach to see them as providers of wireless services in the home after that I mean most insurance companies don't just insure cars ok now reality check usage based insurance is still really rare most folks have never heard of it most of those who have don't really understand it or the technology behind it secondly there's a privacy issue here I mean most of us are not used to sharing data about our driving habits we are used to sharing data about everything else interestingly enough but driving still remains a different zone and third until very recently the hardware to make this happen was clunky and proprietary which kept it very limited but if you look at the rise of connected cars which are real already and personal information sharing from Facebook to fitness bands I think usage based insurance as a matter of way you