This week I received a nice letter from State Farm explaining to me how I could have more control over what I paid for car insurance. How? You might ask. Several car insurance companies are now allowing their customers to opt-in to a “Drive Safe & Save” program, as State Farm calls it.
The program uses your vehicle’s OnStar, In-Drive, or SYNC communication service to collect basic information about your driving and then uses that information to calculate your rate. You can now have your car monitored just like your home.
The insurance companies do not go into much detail as to whether or not your exact location can be determined at any given time; however, with OnStar, we do know that it is a feature that they offer for emergency services. We have most certainly come a long way in the car industry; now in most cases, we are no longer driving cars, but computers.
Of course with technology, in general, there are pros and cons when using it and in this case, it is no different. When allowing insurance companies to collect information from your car, you will not be able to say what information they can take and cannot take. In most cases, they will have the right to access pretty much any information that they deem “necessary”. For those brave drivers who do not mind providing access to this information, it will definitely increase the number of safe drivers that we have on our roads.