GM sharing Smart Driver data with insurance companies.

chaseydog

chaseydog

Well-known member
The MyGMC app has a feature called Smart Driver. I haven't really paid much attention to it. Gives you some semi interesting stats about trips such as mpg and drive time. It also captures data like hard acceleration and hard braking.

According to GM this is to help you be a safe driver. According to the NY times GM sells the data to LexisNexis who sell it to the insurance companies.

NY Times article
 
chaseydog said:
The MyGMC app has a feature called Smart Driver. I haven't really paid much attention to it. Gives you some semi interesting stats about trips such as mpg and drive time. It also captures data like hard acceleration and hard braking.

According to GM this is to help you be a safe driver. According to the NY times GM sells the data to LexisNexis who sell it to the insurance companies.

NY Times article
Click to expand...
Sort of like the Progressive Snapshot, except better connected, no pesky phone or OBD II port device:

https://www.progressive.com/auto/discounts/snapshot/

Of course, most Americans freely give up their personnel data to Alphabet, Meta, and the CCP, err, Tok Tok, so no biggy.

Remember the Colorado and Canyons bricking up because of a bad OTA update? Hmm, what if they don't want you to drive it because a subscription fee wasn't paid or their captive finance arm wants it immobilized for easy repo?

Or maybe, somebody WANTS you to be driving:

https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/

Wonder how far technology has advanced in the interim, especially when people just keep hitting "Yes" on those big beautiful screens that allow OTH control...
 
I remember that Jeep article when it came out! We're not getting less tech I cars so even though some don't want software companies to be in the car business there's something to be said for having the best software teams possible. And most of the legacy brands haven't invested as much as they could have, especially with security. It is getting better... ish with some of the companies.
 
Her is a snapshot of the data being reported. Curious as to what they consider hard braking. No short stops or jaming on the breaks, but the app shows that 64% of my trips involved hard braking. Oddly enough the app is also giving me a braking genius trophy for not hard braking.
IMG_0660.png
 
Last edited:
I submitted a request to LexisNexis for a copy of my personal information report. I want to see for myself what is being reported. I also curious to see if it shows who the data is being reported to.
 
Downloaded my LexisNexis consumer risk report this evening. 104 pages of information, with 204 telematic records for my AT4, dating from January 25th to March 8th. I opted out of Smart driver a week or so a go so GM has another 2 weeks of data that presumably hasn’t been handed over to LexisNexis yet. I hope that opting out will prohibit them from providing any more data to LexisNexis, but it might only mean they can’t continue to collect data. The record source for all of the telematic data is listed as General Motors Holdings.

One of the things that bothered me most about smart driver, other than the obvious, is that they called out hard accelerations and hard braking's without ever clarifying how those are measured. One of the oddities I noticed in my report is that some of the instances of acceleration events and hard braking events are shown as -1. Leaves me wondering what a -1 means.

Another thing that struck me as odd is that the records are not in calendar order. For example, record 78 took place on 2/26, record 79 on 1/31, and record 80 on 2/10. Leads me to believe GM likely dumps the data in batches.

Other than the telemetric data there's a lot of information about where I’ve lived and credit inquiries, but nothing else that I wouldn’t have assumed is already out there.
 
giphy-1361254627.gif
chaseydog said:
Downloaded my LexisNexis consumer risk report this evening. 104 pages of information, with 204 telematic records for my AT4, dating from January 25th to March 8th. I opted out of Smart driver a week or so a go so GM has another 2 weeks of data that presumably hasn’t been handed over to LexisNexis yet. I hope that opting out will prohibit them from providing any more data to LexisNexis, but it might only mean they can’t continue to collect data. The record source for all of the telematic data is listed as General Motors Holdings.

One of the things that bothered me most about smart driver, other than the obvious, is that they called out hard accelerations and hard braking's without ever clarifying how those are measured. One of the oddities I noticed in my report is that some of the instances of acceleration events and hard braking events are shown as -1. Leaves me wondering what a -1 means.

Another thing that struck me as odd is that the records are not in calendar order. For example, record 78 took place on 2/26, record 79 on 1/31, and record 80 on 2/10. Leads me to believe GM likely dumps the data in batches.

Other than the telemetric data there's a lot of information about where I’ve lived and credit inquiries, but nothing else that I wouldn’t have assumed is already out there.
Click to expand...
 
I deleted the mychevrolet account because of the selling personal info fiasco. Before fully deleting account i had to answer a question asking why i was deleting my account. One of the responses to choose from was something like “i don’t trust gm with my personal data.” That’s the one i chose.
 
Dusdaddy said:
Excellent choice. I'd be interested to know how the data selling contracts go. How much does GM get for it?
Click to expand...
I’d also like to know those two things as well as who decided to betray the trust of gm customers and is that person still with gm, if so, why.
 
Here is a screen of the telematic data from my report. I opted out of Smart Driver after the story broke. My OnStar subscription runs out next month and I'll be cancelling that as well. Looks like California residents are protected against this BS.

1711188708261.png
Lexis.jpg
 
Dusdaddy said:
Excellent choice. I'd be interested to know how the data selling contracts go. How much does GM get for it?
Click to expand...
At the very least GM need to work with LexisNexis and provide us with a clear path for having that data expunged. If not, hopefully the courts will step in and order the telematic data removed from our records.
 
Going to pull this one back up again as I recently received some more information. For those that were unaware GM was sharing the Smart Driver data with Verisk as well as Lexis Nexis. I have received my report from both companies and there are some differences in the way data is being reported as well as some discrepancies in the actual data. The Verisk report only contained my Smart Driver data while the LN report contained information from other sources including residences, phone numbers, and who’s insured me.

Regarding the Smart Driver data, the LN report shows each trip as an individual record while the Verisk report compiles all the day’s trips into a single record. On March 4, Verisk is showing I made a total of 3 trips and drove 21.07 miles, while LN is showing 3 records for that day and a total of 21.13 miles driven. The discrepancy is likely due to the way each report is rounding the numbers.

Neither report shows any Rapid Acceleration Events for that day. The LN report is showing 8 Hard Braking events on the 4th while the Verisk report is showing 15. I don’t think we can attribute that discrepancy to a rounding error.

The LN report does not quantify how Rapid Acceleration and Hard Braking Events are measured. I contacted OnStar to see if they could provide some clarification but did not get anything out of them beyond “we don’t have that information”. The Verisk report did provide a definition with a Rapid Acceleration event defined as > 9.5kph/s and a Hard Braking event defined as < -9.5kph/s.

Another discrepancy is that my LN report shows some Rapid Acceleration and Hard Braking events as -1, while the Verisk report does not have any negative values.
 
chaseydog said:
Going to pull this one back up again as I recently received some more information. For those that were unaware GM was sharing the Smart Driver data with Verisk as well as Lexis Nexis. I have received my report from both companies and there are some differences in the way data is being reported as well as some discrepancies in the actual data. The Verisk report only contained my Smart Driver data while the LN report contained information from other sources including residences, phone numbers, and who’s insured me.

Regarding the Smart Driver data, the LN report shows each trip as an individual record while the Verisk report compiles all the day’s trips into a single record. On March 4, Verisk is showing I made a total of 3 trips and drove 21.07 miles, while LN is showing 3 records for that day and a total of 21.13 miles driven. The discrepancy is likely due to the way each report is rounding the numbers.

Neither report shows any Rapid Acceleration Events for that day. The LN report is showing 8 Hard Braking events on the 4th while the Verisk report is showing 15. I don’t think we can attribute that discrepancy to a rounding error.

The LN report does not quantify how Rapid Acceleration and Hard Braking Events are measured. I contacted OnStar to see if they could provide some clarification but did not get anything out of them beyond “we don’t have that information”. The Verisk report did provide a definition with a Rapid Acceleration event defined as > 9.5kph/s and a Hard Braking event defined as < -9.5kph/s.

Another discrepancy is that my LN report shows some Rapid Acceleration and Hard Braking events as -1, while the Verisk report does not have any negative values.
Click to expand...
Good information thanks for following up. The two companies must be using different metrics to define hard stops and rapid accelerations. Hopefully, opting out actually stops the data from being reported.
 
chaseydog said:
The MyGMC app has a feature called Smart Driver. I haven't really paid much attention to it. Gives you some semi interesting stats about trips such as mpg and drive time. It also captures data like hard acceleration and hard braking.

According to GM this is to help you be a safe driver. According to the NY times GM sells the data to LexisNexis who sell it to the insurance companies.

NY Times article
Click to expand...
I didn’t know this existed until I read this. I went through some of my trips recently taken just to see what kind of information was “recorded”. Thanks for sharing this.👍
 
This is basically the Snapshot system that Progressive used to offer for discounts. However, they seem to be able to collect a lot more data and the opting in process is hidden in an acceptance screen. I have my suspicions that the reason insurance rates have increased so much recently could be tied to this data collection. All the modern cars have the ability to collect data like this. GM got caught selling it, but I would not be surprised if all automakers are doing it in some form or another.
 
chaseydog said:
The LN report does not quantify how Rapid Acceleration and Hard Braking Events are measured. I contacted OnStar to see if they could provide some clarification but did not get anything out of them beyond “we don’t have that information”. The Verisk report did provide a definition with a Rapid Acceleration event defined as > 9.5kph/s and a Hard Braking event defined as < -9.5kph/s.
Click to expand...

That seems the most likely. My insurance company considers 8mph (13kph) per second as excessive braking so obviously they don't all follow the same standard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top