Originally Posted by
BOS1971
Thank you. Are the connected cars also tracking and storing location, speed and other things?
I rented a car a couple of years ago because my wife rear-ended another car at an intersection, writing our car off. Two days later, I managed to have not just the exact same crash, but at the exact same intersection, in the rental car (it's a terrible intersection - you have to look almost behind the car to see approaching traffic, which is coming over a hill, so isn't visible until it's quite close: people will often start to drive off then unexpectedly stop, which is what happened to both of us. You're still looking almost backward for traffic and you can't see the stopped car in your peripheral vision).
Anyway, the car was still drivable in my case, so I took it back to the rental agency and told them what had happened. The guy pulled up the car's logging on his computer and said "OK, you came off the freeway at the Maroochydore exit doing 95 km/h, you slowed to 58 in the 60 zone, then came to a complete stop at the intersection. Then you accelerated to 17 km/h and impacted the car in front".
So yes, I'd say they're tracking a LOT of data about your activities with the car. And this was a smallish Australian-only agency, not one of the big multinationals, who I assume collect even more.
In my case, fortunately, even though I was at fault in the accident, they could see from the data that I wasn't an irresponsible driver, so they had no issue with me renting with them in future.