The case for “pay as you drive”

My colleague has a case against “pay as you drive” insurance. She doesn’t like the idea of someone “watching” her as she drives. She likes her privacy.

Ironically, some of the folks decrying a lack of privacy are the same ones with Facebook and Twitter accounts. They don’t mind telling the world what they had for breakfast or “what they’re doing right now,” but they’re shocked by the idea of a car device recording some driving data. Listen, lots of people already know you’re driving badly because you’re texting them or talking to them on your cell phone as you drive.

I hardly think that there’s a group of Progressive employees standing around the watercooler on Monday morning snickering over your weekend driving data. I’m sure Progressive employees are busy people with better things to do; they let the computers do the number crunching. What “privacy” have you really lost?

And if the presence of a monitoring device in a vehicle makes someone think twice before driving like a bat out of hell, I’m for that, too.