Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.
So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.
LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.
On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.
I would argue that this is an improvement over modern designs because one can memorize the orientation of the buttons and change gears without looking. One time I was driving a Buick and I accidentally engaged the E-Brake because there is zero tactile difference between Drive and E-Brake. Having to constantly look at the very bottom of a display panel, with zero peripheral vision on the road whatsoever, to fuck with a row of toggles to change the cabin A/C because making everything completely uniform is fashionable is inexcusable to me. I think that these large infotainment systems should be banned from cars and only something large enough for a backup camera is really necessary. All these apps and displays and flashy animations are so badly distracting.
You’re 100% correct on the tactile difference in the buttons. I didn’t think of that. A similar complaint is every feature is a “button” on the infotainment screen. I saw this on a Dodge. My current car has no touchscreen and I have driven it long enough to just know where all the buttons are without looking. In my opinion, distracted driving should include these types of things that take your attention off of the road.