Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.
So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.
LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.
On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.
Last time I drove a rental car I was constantly aware that it was probably tracking everything I did, sending that data back to its owners, who would then sell it on to data brokers and insurance companies and whoever else wanted it.
It was sort of tolerable on a temporary basis, until I got to driving along a road where the speed limit had recently changed. The car helpfully displayed what it thought the speed limit was, and suddenly I had to choose between driving safely and driving according to what the computers presumably wanted to see.
Drivers of the world, do not let your cars have Internet access. No good can come of it.
Classic JDM shit boxes till I die. Used to be a joke, but since cars have become what are essentially IoT devices, it’s become real. 🥲