Mildly Infuriating

You can be the best defensive driver in the world but sometimes you’re just going to have to brake hard to avoid an object that may jump on you, dinging your driving score and raising your premiums.

If you're the best driver in the world, you don't need to carry insurance because the lifetime expected spending on premiums is below the lifetime insurance payments. The only reason you carry insurance is if you're not sure whether you're the best driver in the world.

Once your insurance knows (better than you) where you rank as a driver, they will either refuse to cover you (because costs > revenues) or raise your rates until you fall into a high risk of changing carriers (because that's where they maximize profits). The initial discount is simply a teaser rate, while the company collects more data. The real determination of your max tolerable premium is your personal income, which is set by the value of your vehicle. All the telematics is hand-wavy bullshit. You really might be the best driver in the world, but they'll still raise your rates if they think you'll pay it.

The real secret to getting a lower insurance premium is to own a cheaper car (and therefore signal to your insurer that you have less money to spend on insurance).

Don't do it. It's a bait and switch. You'll get the initial discount, then you brake hard one day because someone cuts you off.. and next thing you know your rate goes up. Also if your take a turn too fast. If you speed. If you accelerate hard (RPMs go above normal range).

It's crazy how most of those programs work. The way my insurance handles it is way better. For example, no matter how bad you are at driving, they never raise the premiums above the normal rate, so it almost always makes sense to get the tracker from a finance perspective. (The only exception is that they will raise your rates if you drive farther in 6 months than you estimated on your initial application. The flip side is that they lower your rates if you don't drive very much. I only drive about 1000 miles every 6 months, so my premium is really low.) They also have a Bluetooth device that stays in your car that your phone must be connected to in order for it to record trip data, and if you happen to be riding as the passenger in the car, the app has an option that allows you to clarify for each trip that you weren't the driver. I was surprised to learn they aren't all like that.

I'll preface this by saying this shady shit gets all my hate.

It’s tempting to opt for telematics/black box insurance because of the initial cheaper prices but the privacy violations and potential downsides make it not worth it.

The overall problem here is that human psychology tends to frame this difference as a loss not a gain. Given the choice, people will see the cheaper option as the baseline, and then ask "can I afford to pay more for privacy?" instead of affirming "my privacy is not worth this discount."

Also, those of us that have paid for insurance without such a "discount", are likely keenly aware of the difference. For new drivers, from now to here on out, the lack of past experience presents a new baseline where this awfulness is normalized. Competition between insurance providers won't help us here since the "privacy free" option is still profitable and is enticing for new customers (read: younger, poorer). So it'll take some kind of law, collective action, or government intervention to make this go away.

Have fun fighting with your insurance to get them to remove anything from your record. [...] If I had spyware insurance they would’ve dinged me for it.

I think this is the bigger problem. If someone has the data an insurance company wants, you probably agreed to an EULA or signed something that makes their ownership, and its sale, legal. With the "yeah go ahead and use my data" option on the table, the machinery to do this without your knowledge is already in place. All the insurance provider has to do is buy the data from someone else. When the price is right, 1st party spyware isn't required at all.