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Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe that anyone would voluntarily sign up for this. Frankly, insurance isn't that expensive.

Having a little third party controlled snitch hooked to your car is a security issue, period. The fact that the implementation is a shitshow is just icing on the cake.

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at £1400 last year my insurance is expensive. Partly due to living in a city and using on street parking but mostly due to my age (<25). My mother, who had the same model, paid £250.

The 15% discount for taking a black box still isn't worth it for me however.

I drive a car with 380bhp, so while the insurance without the black box is about £300 more than the one with it, I'm pretty sure it's not worth getting the box. I pay about £1000/year at the moment.

Wow!

Being part of a late 30s couple with pretty boring driving history in a small city pays I guess. I pay like $700-850 (depending on how you break out umbrella liability cost) for maxed out coverage in an above average cost US state. I think I paid around $1200 when I was a dumb kid with tickets. :)

Even if there were siginifciant savings, it wouldn't be worth it to me to have that kind of telemetry being gathered. It can only be used against you in a accident situation.

Over here there's no choice in the limit of cover - EU mandates that every car insurance has to cover 5 million Euro in personal damages and 3 million in property damage. The only "optional" thing is whether you want to get comprehensive insurance which covers your own car for the damage caused by yourself - but 3rd party liability is always set to that 5 and 3 million by law.

I guess you could buy some specialist insurance which would cover more but unless you are planning on crashing into multiple Bugatti Veyrons, it's pretty much impossible to hit that limit.

Interesting, that's nowhere near the level of insurance (it's significantly higher) than what even non-cut-rate insurers will recommend for most drivers in the states. After changing providers, we pay $1400 for two cars with $100,000/$300,000 (individual/total) injury and $100,000 in property coverage.

I think a big difference in the US is that there's usually no fault for personal injury, so the liability is pooled.

> Frankly, insurance isn't that expensive.

I've had a driving license for about 10 years and I've never been in a collision, never gotten a ticket, and never filed an insurance claim -- neverthless, my insurance premium was $95 a month (likely due to my age, credit report, not being married) until I switched to a pay-per-mile insurance that requires a "third party controlled snitch" connected to my vehicle's OBD port -- which cut my premium significantly.

> I can't believe that anyone would voluntarily sign up for this.

It saves me money and I don't have much money. Hell, it's why people even bother with insurance companies in the first place -- it's cheaper than depositing $60,000 in a surety bond to the DMV.

Well, it seems a lot more reasonable than the popular default of trading all your data for free services that either have very cheap alternatives, or would have if there was a market for it.

I'm speaking from guilt.

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