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Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

This is exactly how the insurance industry works. They are trying to control risk. Having the riskier people pay more is based on math, to offset their costs.

Even if you have "no accidents", they can point to data that shows certain indicators, vs. your real reason for no accidents may just be luck of the draw. Point being that the presence of accidents or not doesn't make one a good or safe driver.

I'm not saying it's right, but it's a business and there in it to make money, not to be fair. What is right is somewhere in between. It's like saying that those that smoke should pay more for health care. There's a case to be made for that, but there are also people that are hit with conditions and diseases through no action of their own, simply bad genetics. With decent health care, they can often live full and productive lives, but it's a shit society to hit them with huge premiums for their conditions and situations they can never really get on top of due to those costs. The whole point of insurance IS to "spread it out a bit". So somewhere in there, there's a balance. That's where regulation usually has to come in. So regulating what they can do with your data is one step.

James, you're right in that regulation is the "traditional" approach for reining in such overreaches. Unfortunately it doesn't work too well, because the regulatory process itself isn't immune to other types of overreach either, which is very difficult to solve.

There is also the fact that insurance is mandatory, so this isn't a perfectly competitive business scenario. The underlying issues are complex and very much worth discussing, but I'd rather not hijack someone else's thread any further.