The Lemon Fool

didds wrote:And there would be an ENORMOUS amount of dead/useless data for those insurance companies' systems to have to weed out..

Crunching data is very cheap these days.

A few years ago I worked on some business intelligence systems and the scary part with those is the stuff they can figure out about people that you just would not predict.

The canonical example given by BI vendors is the link between nappies and beer.
Once they figured out that connection, (young fathers being sent out to buy nappies and deciding to pick up some beer at the same time), many supermarkets started moving the beer and nappies so they are together, either on the next aisle or right on the next shelf, and sales of beer shot up.

Less pleasant example is that they can predict a large percentage of fraud just by looking at peoples other activity. The problem is that these things are never 100% accurate, but are sometimes treated like they are factual rather then an imperfect prediction.

Never mind all the complicated stuff above. How about:

We have recorded that your vehicle reg number 123 TLF is a <whatever> and your tyre pressures should be 40psi. Our tyre pressure readers detected you drove onto the M4 at <whatever slip road, time and date> with your nearside front tyre at 31psi and your £60 fixed penalty charge notice is enclosed.

bluedonkey wrote:Looks like you will have to get a bicycle to keep Big Brother at bay.

My bike has a double digit TPMS.

Lanark wrote:

didds wrote:And there would be an ENORMOUS amount of dead/useless data for those insurance companies' systems to have to weed out..

Crunching data is very cheap these days.

A few years ago I worked on some business intelligence systems and the scary part with those is the stuff they can figure out about people that you just would not predict.

The canonical example given by BI vendors is the link between nappies and beer.
Once they figured out that connection, (young fathers being sent out to buy nappies and deciding to pick up some beer at the same time), many supermarkets started moving the beer and nappies so they are together, either on the next aisle or right on the next shelf, and sales of beer shot up.

Yeah this soft nudge stuff is quite frightening when you first encounter it (obligatory mention of Influence by Cialdini)
..but it was always fun to look at your wallet at the checkout and ask the operator to put the nappies back, keeping the beer