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Now that automobile manufacturers are almost more about software than hardware, your car company may know more about you than your spouse based on all the sensors in your car. The incentive to collect driver and passenger data is great. Every piece of data is used to increase revenue, especially if sold onward to third-parties.
Dunn may consider his everyday driving habits mundane, but auto and privacy experts suspect that big automakers like Honda see them as anything but. By monitoring his everyday movements, an automaker can vacuum up a massive amount of personal information about someone like Dunn, everything from how fast he drives and how hard he brakes to how much fuel his car uses and the entertainment he prefers. The company can determine where he shops, the weather on his street, how often he wears his seat belt, what he was doing moments before a wreck — even where he likes to eat and how much he weighs.
Though drivers may not realize it, tens of millions of American cars are being monitored like Dunn's, experts say, and the number increases with nearly every new vehicle that is leased or sold.
The result is that carmakers have turned on a powerful spigot of precious personal data, often without owners' knowledge, transforming the automobile from a machine that helps us travel to a sophisticated computer on wheels that offers even more access to our personal habits and behaviors than smartphones do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:00PM (1 child)
> Is it common in the US for drivers to have such an unhealthy relationship with their vehicles?
Yes. In America, men love their cars more than their women. For some men, the car is an extension of their manhood, and the primary way to show off (or fake) wealth, power, and status. There was a brief fad with solid gold rims for the wheels, but the fad faded quickly after several owners were murdered for their rims.
The whole nation is oriented around the car, just the way Ford, GM, and Chrysler wanted. The only exception is the airplane for fast, long distance travel. If you don't have a car in America, you will quickly discover how hard it is to get places. So many bridges have zero room for pedestrians, and anyway, walking is only for the lowest of the low class. Public transport is very patchy and slow.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:44PM
My car is cheaper than any woman. (And it is a semi-luxury model.)
My car rarely complains.
My car is dependable.
My car is not terribly pretty, but she's got it where it counts.
My car goes on almost every journey with me.
But my car does not mind when go off on my own with an airplane.
My car would never cheat on me.
I do realize that not all cars can fit these terms. I advice people to get out of those relationships and find one they can love.