Data Loggers for Cheaper Insurance

A follow-up to the last post. Recalling the incident with the National Grid van reminds me that I need to buy a video camera for my bike so if bad stuff happens then I have some evidence. I did contact the National Grid to report the incident, but they said it would be impossible to track the driver down, and they don't use GPS trackers / data loggers in their fleet.

They should. Those devices are great. I assume, because people can opt to have them for cheaper insurance, that they really do make people drive better. But what about liberty, big brother, etc? Don't see what the issue is. Have privacy concerns, don't like it, or want to drive like an idiot? Don't bother with a tracker then, but be prepared to pay extra. Why should you have to pay? Because your risk changes. You pay according to the risk you represent.

Ah, so why is it a problem if the government made them compulsory? General reasons against governments increasing their meddling portfolio:

• Low hanging fruit. If something is important and requires some legislation it would probably already be in legislation by now. Since we don't already have it, it's worth noting that society hasn't fallen apart without it (we've survived a civil war, an industrial revolution, two world wars, etc). The possible new things governments can mandate are probably increasingly hard to implement, have unintended consequences, are controversial, etc. 
• People can be trusted respond to incentives far more than people whose job it is to govern tend to give them credit for. When all you know how to do is hammer, every problem looks like a nail. People tend to overestimate their own competence. This is all important to note, given a political solution can be a heavy-handed approach to something as complex as human affairs.
• The proposed solution may not attack the root cause, or may not be well thought out. The people who write legislation tend to be career politicians with legal backgrounds. They're probably not engineers or scientists, who might care about keeping things simple and managing complexity.
• Politics. The proposed solution might be more about grabbing headlines, gamesmanship with the other side, etc. Like New Labour trying to outflank the Tories on law and order, terrorism, etc.
• Lobbying. The proposed solution might be a result of powerful interests who want some of the 45% ish of GDP controlled by the state directed their way, or want to make it harder for the little guys by making compliance with various new laws arduous.
• Eggs in one basket. If it's wrong, there's no diversity which might be helpful. For example, if government plans food production and gets it badly wrong, then we're really shafted.
• Whatever it is, it will probably generate more work for lawyers and accountants. That's a drag on the economy.
• If it's expanding the role of government, it's diluting democracy. That one single vote each person has then has to encompass more issues. It distracts from the important stuff, while people demand action and politicians jerk knees over this new stuff.
• Once government gets involved in something, it's damn hard to get rid of it. Imagine repealing the extreme porn law. There would be howls that doing so would be to send a signal that extreme porn is OK, etc.
• The medicine might be worse than the disease, e.g. with the war on drugs.
• Loads of reasons in the Road to Serfdom.