General Motors announced Friday that it has stopped sharing details about how people drive its cars with two data brokers who have created risk profiles for the insurance industry.
The decision followed a New York Times report this month that GM had, for years, shared data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. Drivers signed up — some unknowingly, they said — to OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in GM’s internet-connected cars that collected data about how the car was driven and promised feedback and digital signals for good driving.
Some drivers said their insurance rates had increased as a result of the collected data, which GM shared with two brokers, LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk. The companies then sold the data to insurance companies.
As of Wednesday, “OnStar Smart Driver customer data is no longer shared with LexisNexis or Verisk,” GM spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said in an emailed statement. “Customer trust is a priority for us and we are actively evaluating our privacy processes and policies.”
Romeo Chicco, a Florida man whose insurance rates nearly doubled after Cadillac collected his driving data, filed a class-action lawsuit against GM, OnStar and LexisNexis this month.
An internal document, reviewed by The Times, showed that by 2022, more than eight million vehicles would be on Smart Driver. An employee familiar with the program said the company’s annual revenue from Smart Driver was in the low millions of dollars.
