Insurance companies have started offering drivers "roadside assistance" digital devices that can track and locate cars when drivers are in need of help. As Wired notes, State Farm's On-Star competitor, In-Drive, can do more than just call a tow truck for a stranded driver or locate a stolen vehicle, it can also track driving habits, including "speed, time of day [driven], miles driven, acceleration, braking and the number of left and right turns." Drivers who subscribe — for $5 to $15 per month — will see their premiums go down if they prove to be safe drivers.

Keith Barry describes State Farm's In-Drive and Progressive's similar Snapshot as trading "perks for privacy" — as drivers offer insurance companies greater insight into what they're up to on the roads in exchange for lower rates. State Farm, for one, sends participating drivers a " report card" at the end of each month, rating drivers' practices, and says it hopes this will make people drive more safely. If it makes people less likely to tailgate me at 80 miles per hour, I , for one, am a big fan.

AAA is currently offering a similar program for teen drivers in California and Texas, but it's going about it differently. Cletus Nunes, a group manager at AAA in charge of "ACE Teen Pilot Program," thinks that their competitors' offerings are overly-invasive. "We're sensitive to the concerns of our members," says Nunes. "They're using this data to rate drivers. They're collecting information about how you drive. We're not."

How is AAA doing it differently?

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Like its competitors, AAA offers a device that plugs into a car's OBD diagnostic port. AAA collaborated with Delphi Electronics to create its AAA OnBoard device. AAA members in California and Texas (only states offering the program for now) can choose between two programs: 1) Pay-as-you-drive insurance with roadside assistance, or 2) Teen safety with roadside assistance.

The first collects only mileage, says Nunes, to set insurance rates accordingly (lower for light drivers, higher for heavier ones), and can pinpoint a car's location when queried, though it doesn't collect ongoing location info.

"We don't collect where you are, how fast you're driving, acceleration, or anything like that," says Nunes.

The second program for teens, does collect that information, using the same device (it can be switched from one function to the other wirelessly). Nunes says the data is not sent to AAA; it's instead siloed on a server for parents to access. "Crashes are the leading cause of death for 15 to 21 year olds," says Nunes. "We're helping parents to coach their kids on safer driving. Kids will drive safer knowing they're being watched."

AAA is essentially leaving it up to parents to grade their kids' driving rather than doing it institutionally. AAA says it won't look at the data to set rates, nor use it in the event of a car accident. That's distinctly different from what competitors State Farm and Progressive are doing. Beyond not using the behavioral data for rate purposes, AAA's program has another key difference: it provides the $250 device for free and does not currently charge a subscription fee for it.

Toyota doesn't settle it first.

he bargaining deadline.

Two years ago, Amber Duick started getting emails from a 25-year-old English soccer fan named Sebastian Bowler. In his first email, he wrote, "Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles. Gonna lay low at your place for a bit. Till it all blows over. Bringing Trigger."

She didn't know the dude, and did not respond. The next day, he emailed again with her home address, calling it a "Nice place to hide out," telling her that his pitbull, Trigger, "don't throw up much anymore, but put some newspaper down in case." He included a link to his MySpace page to remind her of who he was. She still did not recognize him and started to freak out about the fact that he planned to come to her home.

The English fugitive continued emailing her as he drove across the country to her home, sending photos of the road trip and describing his evasion of the police. "I seem to have lost the coppers for now, so I'm all good, mate… Had a brush with the law last night. Anyway, hopefully I'll have lost them by the time I get to your place." In one email, he said that he "had a problem" at a hotel. Duick shortly thereafter got an email from a motel manager with a bill for damage that Bowler the delinquent had done to his room. The soccer hooligan had smashed the T.V.

Now, at this point, many of you are probably thinking that you would have called the police, but Duick apparently did not. Five days after Bowler started emailing her, Duick finally got an email with a link to a video that informed her that it was all a prank orchestrated by Toyota and the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi. It was an elaborate advertising campaign designed to promote the car Bowler had been fleeing the authorities in, the Toyota Matrix. A friend (or frenemy) had signed Duick up to participate; Duick said she didn't realize she had given her consent to participate, when Toyota had sent her a personality test by email a few days before Bowler started harassing her.

Viral/guerrilla marketing is all the rage these days, as companies try to come up with exciting new ways to pitch their products. They're often amusing and get lots of media attention, but I've raised concerns before about people feeling like victims of hoaxes and then being turned off the product.

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The Toyota Matrix "YourOtherYou" campaign was aimed at 20-year-old males who love pranks. In this case, Duick was really turned off. She was terrified, she says, in a $10 million lawsuit [pdf, via Wired] against Toyota and its advertising company for intentional infliction of emotional distress and unfair, unlawful, and deceptive trade practices, among other claims. Said legal scholar Jonathan Turley when this lawsuit was first filed in L.A. in 2009: "I am astonished that any lawyer reviewed this campaign and approved it."

A judge has decided to let the lawsuit drive forward and go to a jury, assuming Toyota doesn't settle it first.

he bargaining deadline.

There's less than a week to go before the bargaining deadline on new contracts between the United Auto Workers and Detroit automakers, and the usual drumbeats of discontent are rising. Talks at General Motors are progressing, but the two sides are said to be far apart at Chrysler and Ford Motor.

Last week, UAW members at Ford plants voted 97% in favor of authorizing a strike should negotiations fail to produce an agreement by Sept. 14, when the current contract expires. (Workers at GM and Chrysler don't get to make such a threat because the union agreed to a no-strike clause in 2009 to help the two automakers recover from bankruptcy.)
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It all makes for good drama, but a strike authorization really doesn't mean anything. It's just another tool the union can use as leverage at the bargaining table.

I think the chances for a strike at Ford are nil, for reasons that I'll explain later. But that doesn't mean the company doesn't have a labor problem. Unlike GM and Chrysler, which were lucky to survive bankruptcy (thanks to Uncle Sam), Ford is seen in a different light by many. Because it "didn't take the money," Ford is perceived to be in better shape financially. Hourly workers figure their sacrifices helped Ford avoid bankruptcy and now they want to recoup some of the wages and benefits they gave up in recent years.

Management has an entirely different view, of course. Despite $6.6 billion in net profit in 2010 and $4.9 billion through the first half of 2011, Ford says the company still has an $8-an-hour U.S. labor cost gap with competitors like Toyota, Hyundai and Kia, so it wants to squeeze even more savings out of the next contract.

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UAW President Bob King is a pragmatist and has said many times that the union wants to be a partner to the automakers and that it won't make demands that would leave them at a competitive disadvantage. But his members at Ford, in particular, are feeling militant. Last year, they dealt King an embarrassing blow when they refused to ratify a proposed deal that mirrored union concessions at GM and Chrysler. Ford, they said, could afford to pay.

Clearly the two sides are not on the same page.

It doesn't help that Ford's board of directors gave chief executive Alan Mulally a 48% raise in 2010, to $26.5 million, and rewarded him with another $56.6 million in stock last March. Nobody, including King, would argue that Mulally hasn't done an admirable job leading Ford's turnaround since 2006. But the CEO's pay is excessive, argues King. "I don't know anybody who's worth that much," he told journalists earlier this year. (Frankly, I think I agree with him.)

Ford is quick to point out that the bulk of Mulally's compensation — all but $1.5 billion — is performance-based, and he has done a stellar job leading the company through an unprecedented industry crisis. But King thinks it's "morally wrong" for Mulally to be paid so much when some hourly Ford workers are earning $14 or $15 an hour and the union gave up pay increases and bonuses to help Ford survive.

When it comes to shared sacrifice, the union has another gripe, too. More than 35,000 of Ford's 41,000 factory workers signed a grievance last year after Ford reinstated raises, tuition assistance and 401(k) matches for white-collar workers. An arbitration hearing on that complaint is scheduled, coincidentally, for Sept. 15, a day after the bargaining deadline.