I remember telling some pre-teen cousins how great it is in the summer to ride down a country road at dusk, the cool from the trees brushing your skin and the breezes lifting the hair off your neck. At last, one of them ventured, meekly and disapprovingly, "that's before they had helmets, right ?" Now that it's tantamount to child abuse to let an unsunscreened child go barefoot anywhere, and skateboarding is forbidden anywhere in public except in special parks that look curiously like oversized dog runs, you'd think that we'd be catching on. Only a matter of time before we make children of ourselves. And children don't get choices; these are introduced gradually, usually per the just-enough-rope-to- (almost)-hang-yourself, until the increasingly delayed factor of personal responsibility makes adulthood a reality. And so, the way to limit real human freedom, to ultimately make people forget all about it while thinking they enjoy it every time they choose between twenty brands of canned peas or laptops, is first to reduce real human freedom to consumer choice, and then to take away that choice altogether. The reduction of RHF is at the moment heavily dependent on selling human beings the idea that being monitored is something that is done for you, not to you. Since this is what the current generation of parents ---and I mean that current generation in the news, you know my favorite paper----, "helicoptering," e-mailing summer camp because Susie didn't get her favorite juice, going to the dean over Timmy's first B+ since fifth grade, building game rooms at home so they don't go out (yes), calling their adult children's bosses on the phone (yes), considers healthy and necessary, it has been very easy to reverse engineer the process, and reduce them to a state they associate with safety, and worse, moral superiority. Or as one twenty-something, who is a thirty-something by now, put it to me during a discussion of privacy rights and data collection some years ago: "I don't worry about that stuff; I'm not doing anything wrong."
So, I could not help but notice the pattern I've just outlined make itself so clearly obvious in this AP article over the weekend. Note the phrases in bold especially, then, gee, I don't know, go ride your bike on the sidewalk to your local cafe and have a nice, cool martini before your insurance company offers to put a probe in your liver. For a discount, of course...
TRENTON, N.J. - A high-tech monitoring device makes it possible to reduce insurance premiums for drivers who avoid jackrabbit starts and slam-on-the-brakes stops, an insurance company says.The catch? Bad drivers who take a chance on the program may wind up paying a surcharge instead.Auto insurer Progressive Corp. has begun offering its drivers the chance to cut their costs based on how they actually drive, not only on their age, credit score and number of tickets or accidents on their record.The monitoring device - sort of like a black box for cars - tells Progressive what time people drive, how many miles they've driven, how fast they accelerate and how often they hit the brakes. It does not track where people go.Under Progressive's program, customers can earn a first-term discount of up to 10 percent just for signing up. When they renew their policy, their rate could decrease by up to 60 percent based on their driving habits. But it could also increase by up to 9 percent.Richard Hutchinson, a Progressive general manager, said the program is designed for drivers who are consistent and safe."We want people to know that the program is not right for everyone," Hutchinson said."It's for people who drive at low-risk times of day and who keep alert for others on the road," he said. "They don't make fast lane changes or follow too closely behind other drivers so they don't have to overreact or slam on the brakes."
Progressive began the program in Alabama in late June. It's also been made available in Minnesota, Oregon and Michigan. A national rollout of the program will continue through 2009.It starts in New Jersey on Aug. 8. The company will be the first to offer such a program in the Garden State, whose motorists have the highest auto insurance rates in the nation at an average of $1,184 per vehicle.Other companies also recently began offering similar options.GMAC Insurance and OnStar vehicle services last year started a new program that allows motorists to earn an extra discount based on the miles they drive."The consumer is really being given an opportunity to potentially reduce their auto insurance premium in exchange for giving their auto insurer access to information that currently isn't available to them," said Michael Barry, a vice president at the Insurance Information Institute.The concept has been utilized elsewhere, too. After conducting a pilot scheme beginning in 2004, Norwich Union launched a pay-as-you-drive insurance program in 2006 in Great Britain.
Several insurers in recent years have offered monitoring of a particularly vulnerable population of drivers - teenagers. Under American Family Insurance Co.'s program, for example, a camera records audio and video images of the road and the teen driver when motion sensors detect swerving, hard braking, sudden acceleration or a collision.There's an extra benefit to monitored driving programs - they help cut traffic congestion and pollution, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. But Charles Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, told The Star Ledger of Newark for Monday's editions that the group has worries about privacy ."We see this as kind of a creeping abduction of people's data," he said. "Basically, once they collect that data, it belongs to the insurance company. That's a big problem."Progressive spokeswoman Tara Chiarell disagreed, saying the customer owns the data and Progressive doesn't sell it or share it. The company uses it only for claims purposes. She also said Progressive has never been subpoenaed by a court to submit pay-as-you-drive data.Customers can access their data on a secure, password-protected Web site, which allows them to get an up-to-date view of their driving habits and how those habits are affecting their rate, she said.AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman David Weinstein said if a link between electronic monitoring and accident probability becomes clear, they would like to see all drivers' insurance premiums based on that information, "not just select drivers who grant their permission."
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