They do have better information about maintenance needs of my car. However they are limited to giving that to the dealer who already can guess most of that anyway.
Plus, if you were allowed to opt-out, the rest of the opt-in data from other people become _slightly_ less useful.
Therefore, all the gov't needs to do is to mandate that car manufacturers offer the option at a reasonable price (where the 10x price is considered reasonable).
Procurement is expected to find ways % in cut costs continuously, every year, forever. Although data-gathering and selling is not part of procurement it is not surprising if car companies are exploring this.
You see this in all sorts of places, for example, stealing an EV charging cable. To a thief, a $500 charging station is just $10 worth of copper waiting to be melted down. They don't care about the $490 deficit they left behind because that’s the victim's problem. Social media platforms, and apparently now car manufacturers, look through the exact same lens.
However if you care only about a one or two markets and cars are often already built inside that market...
You could properly infer if the phone owner is the driver by determining if they use the phone less than the other car's inhabitants or if they are the only phone detected driving at that speed and location. Or they use the phone more during traffic jams and less during more intense driving.
Then this leaves determining what car is involved. You could potentially see if the phone is connected to the car's entertainment system. That would tell you what car model it is perhaps even with a unique car id though the serial number. Some cars may have bluetooth/wi-fi and the phone could potentially passively scan the largest most consistent signal to get the car's model without ever connecting.
Cross referencing from other data sources (cameras) would give this information though may still be difficult/expensive/unlawful.
So in response to your comment its possible that the chosen surveillance device does actually report acceleration events to LexisNexis and then Progressive. Or this is is a case of overly being paranoid. Either case the possibility exists.
There’s state litigation in Texas and Arkansas at least and a national lawsuit
https://iapp.org/news/a/california-authorities-announce-larg...
GM $20M revenue / $12.75M California fine: Official CA AG press release, May 8, 2026. https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/when-it-comes-data-pr...