Car insurance 'black boxes' only encourage bad driving

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“Telematics are an interdisciplinary field encompassing telecommunications, vehicular technologies, road transportation, road safety, electrical engineering”

That’s the definition from Wikipedia, which I tell my kid is not a reliable source, but for now that definition will do. It’s all the vast and wildly changing ways your car interacts with you and the world around it, how it functions, interprets and defines myriad mounds of information. If you owned a car even 10 years ago, you’re aware of how fast technology is advancing; if you owned a car decades ago you’ll appreciate (or maybe not) that you are essentially driving a computer with tires.

Imagine you have a squawking baby, and instead of trying to guess why it’s wailing, you could plug it into a computer and have the reason displayed for you. No more endless nights. No more wondering what you’ve forgotten, or haven’t tried, or never knew. That’s what technology has given us with our cars. Plug it in, let the computer spit out the codes, remedy the problem and off you go!

It doesn’t always work that way, but with more things that can go wrong it stands to reason the fix will end up being complimentary to the levels of complication. Your car will tell you what ails it; and increasingly, your car will also squeal on you. This is the marvel of telematics. Like the black boxes they always scramble to find in the event of an airplane crash, our cars all have a version of this implanted in them.

Several years back, American insurance company State Farm started offering their clients the chance to have their every move monitored while driving to allow them to save money on their premiums. Other companies have followed suit. Demonstrate to their version of Big Brother that you are a safe driver and they’ll clip your rates. Telematics in the monitor report how often you drive, how far, how quickly you brake, how erratic your steering might be and if you’re inclined to hit things. Other companies have followed suit, and ducklings in 40 states have opted in. For 2016, GM’s OnStar will be offering this built-in to their systems; your participation is optional.

Who wouldn’t welcome the chance to save some money? Who isn’t an excellent driver, sick of paying to balance the statistics against those lunatics out there driving up rates? If you’ve got nothing to hide, who cares who looks?

Read more: Motor Mouth: The cost of cheaper insurance is your privacy

I’m always surprised at how quickly people are willing to put a price on their basic freedoms. Average savings are about 10%, it turns out; while insurance premiums are brutal and insane in Ontario, most places are a little more tempered. Would I let you monitor my every move while I drive to save $180? Not a chance.

The downside to this hyper spying is usually glossed over. What if they find you’re a terrible driver? Will they hike your rates? Well, no, they say. “Not yet” goes unspoken. And an even more insidious thought creeps in here: insurance companies are hardly going to shave that off their bottom line and not make it up somewhere else. If I simply say, “No thanks,” will that result in my rates increasing because I won’t play? What if someone else drives my car, and one of us is excellent and one less so?

Many cars now feature eco systems, usually little green leaves that light up when you are driving well. You are rewarded, like some Pavlovian auto dog, for driving as smoothly as a fart on a sailboat. If you have to have an impact on the environment, at least you can make it as gentle as possible.

A couple of years back, I took part in an experiment. I hypermiled across this glorious country from Halifax to Vancouver. It was a stunt, really, to use as little fuel as possible. The goal was to employ every trick in the book to not use gas. We made it on four and a half tanks in a new Passat. On paper, quite a feat. In practice? Ridiculous. And often dangerous.

Driving to the rhythm of a black box produces the same thing. It may register a car that never goes over the speed limit (though is frequently under, which is equally dangerous); it may register a car that glides away from a light slowly enough to guarantee nobody else makes the light. It may register that you’ve come to no sudden stops, which could be due to your diligent awareness of all around you, or the fact that you’re plugging along in the passing lane and making all go around you. There is no context.

Also read: Like it or not, dash cams are here to stay

Because I have sons, I’ve had manufacturers presume I’ll be very excited with their new nanny systems that allow me to monitor their driving habits. Putting governors on speed and radio levels, and computer programs that allow me to download where they’ve been and how they’ve driven. They presumed wrong. If I don’t trust my kids with my car keys, they don’t get the keys. How in the world could it ever have helped my parents to never trust me, or me to never learn to make decisions without someone watching my every move?

I’m all for drivers developing better skills and becoming safer. That’s called training. Altering your driving patterns to satisfy a box regardless of your circumstances is like training a surgeon on a game of Operation.

You may learn not to light up the clown’s nose, but you haven’t really learned any skill.

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