According to their press release, GMAC Insurance wants to "help you cut costs on the road." To that end, they offer the same five gas-saving tips offered by every auto-related PR firm in the entire country. Oh, if you've got an inactive OnStar button in your car (ah, but is it REALLY inactive?), you can also reduce your motoring expenses by signing-up for their Low-Mileage Discount. Providing you live in one of 34 non-paranoid, insurance industry-dominated states, doing so earns you some time money off for good behavior not driving. Here's how it works: "With the subscriber's permission, the odometer reading from his or her monthly OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics email is forwarded to GMAC Insurance. Based on those readings, the company will adjust the premium using discount tiers corresponding to miles driven. Information sent from OnStar to GMAC Insurance pertains solely to mileage, and no additional data is gathered or used for any purpose other than to help manage transportation costs. Customers who drive more than 15,000 miles per year are not penalized. In fact, all OnStar customers receive an insurance discount simply for having an active OnStar subscription." So, unlike OnStar, GMAC Insurance is promising NOT to provide law enforcement officials with OnStar data; you know, if you're suspected of a crime or in the event of a crash. And if you believe that, GM's got a high mileage hybrid SUV they'd like to sell you.
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Cool! They can also mine the data for every time that you exceeded the speed limit and didn’t get caught!
Yeah, that’s right – just what I needed – somebody ELSE looking over my shoulder.
It’s one of those “deals” that promise savings but penalize you if you over step the boundaries just a little.
Nope, I over step the speed limit every once in a while and I don’t want to get nailed to the wall for it.
Somebody sends me junk mail based on my shopping preferences, somebody (tries to) sends me spam based on my internet habits, somebody calls the house (wants to) to sell me stuff based on my customer profile, and Dish Network sells a record of my TV habits to “somebody”.
Just what I want, an insurance company watching me drive.
Time to toss all of the modern big Brother gadgets and go back to 3 TV channels, no ‘net, and no balck boxes in my cars.
Again high fuel prices and inflation will take care of how people drive. They’ll go a little slower, drive a little more conservatively, and try to make both their car and their fuel last. The remaining idiots will stand out that much more.
This wouldn’t bother me if – and only if – this system for reading mileage was activated and deactivated by the owner. People buy low mileage policies all the time – Leland is one agency that sells them and advertises in car club mags. But count me out if I can’t deactivate the system.
The ability to read automotive black boxes – the ECUs and stability/ABS computer memories – is a lot more of an issue. All modern cars have those and there’s no deactivation. Data logging enough to give a decent picture of what happened in an accident requires pennies of memory. Lawyers will hate this, as it should make fault easier to assign and lessen the weight of their arguments.
Actually, paying for insurance by the mile makes insane amounts of sense. Onstar is not needed for this at all though. Simply send in your odometer monthly should do. Maybe a verification at a dealership on a yearly basis could serve as a deterent to cheats.
This smacks of luddism.
If somebody wants to track/stalk you, they don’t need OnStar to do it. Just ask the sad sap who had his Geico coverage spontaneously cancelled after they discovered that he autocrosses.
Besides, we’re all safe drivers who have no need for the ludicrious amounts of horsepower that car manufacturers provide, so there shouldn’t be any reason why anybody would be tracking us.
…Another ad in the paper said, “We guarantee our furniture, and we stand behind it for six months!”…
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That’s the reason I left Soviet Union… I don’t want people behind my furniture…
While I was considering buying an Astra, OnStar was one of the “negatives” that steered me elsewhere.