Radio Collars for Teen Drivers?
Cascadia’s largest private car insurer—Seattle-based Safeco—has finally announced its first entry into the world of on-board automotive infotech. And it’s not a new insurance plan. It’s a GPS device which, for $15 a month, will notify parents when their teenagers go too fast, too far, or the wrong place. You can now sign up for the service here.
If you’re aghast, well, I’m not surprised. It may make teens feel they’re wearing radio collars. But car crashes cause more than a third of deaths to teens, as the Seattle Times noted in its coverage of Safeco’s new offering. So I’m not against this service, dubbed Teensurance. In fact, I might have considered signing up, if my teenage son hadn’t totaled the family car sixteen months ago, launching us into car-lessness. And, judging only by my own reactions, I’m guessing the commercial market for teen tracking may be robust.
The privacy issues aren’t really what I want to talk about, and I doubt that Teensurance is Safeco’s intended endpoint. The endpoint is pay-as-you-drive insurance, and what impresses me is Safeco’s cleverness.
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Talking about the weather
When it comes to attitudes about climate change, seeing really is believing. The death and destruction left in Hurricane Katrina’s wake prompted public opinion about the reality of global warming to spike (the percent of Americans who believe it's happening stands at about 85), not to mention concerns that we might actually see the effects of climate change in our lifetimes – instead of way off in the far distant future.
Yesterday, Pew released a new study that shows Americans’ climate concerns are on the rise again. This is likely due in part to all kinds of crazy weather we've been seeing lately. From The Independent:
There has been a double-digit increase in the proportion of Americans who say environmental problems are a major global threat - from 23 per cent to 37 per cent [since 2002], according to a comprehensive survey published this week by the Pew Center in Washington.
The environment is increasingly in the news in the US, thanks to violent and unusual weather patterns - mainly floods and severe drought - combined with the rising cost of petrol. The past few days have seen dramatic rainfall across the southern states. More than a foot of rain fell across central Texas and Oklahoma yesterday, with more storms predicted.
