Insurance companies are now in the passenger’s seat

An insurance company is now testing a program where discounts are offered to drivers who can basically prove that they’re good drivers (at least in the opinion of the insurance company). How is this done? By monitoring your driving habits:

An electronic monitor the size of a matchbook closely tracked Sevlie’s driving time and behavior. If he had a heavy foot or was a sudden braker, the auto data recorder would betray him.

Disconnected from the car and hooked to a PC, the device relayed Sevlie’s digital driving diary to his auto insurer, Progressive Corp., with the click of a mouse during a pilot program earlier this year.

There are of course, privacy concerns, though Progressive Insurance seems to dance around this by swearing that the program is and will continue to be strictly voluntary. I just wonder if “voluntary” will eventually mean “you don’t qualify for any good driver discounts at all unless you let our matchbox sit in the passenger’s seat.”

There are also other questions I have. Progressive swears that this technolgoy does not trakc your location by any means. If that’s true, then how is any inference going to be made about whether I’m a leadfoot or not? In some states, the speed limit is 70 MPH and it may actually be a hazard to drive significantly slower than that. So what will allow them to determine the difference between a driver doing 65 on a 70MPH highway and a leadfoot doing 45 in a 15 MPH school zone? And what will differentiate between a person who brakes hard as a matter of habit (causing all kinds of havoc for everyone behind him or her in stop and go traffic) and a person who is only braking hard because s/he’s effectively evading a swoop-and-squat?