Nebraska AG: General Motors sold driver data to insurers in 'one-way racket'

Nebraska on Tuesday became the second state in the U.S. to sue the country's largest automaker, accusing General Motors of collecting driving data on millions of unknowing customers and selling it to insurers who used it to hike rates or cancel policies.

In a 40-page lawsuit filed Tuesday morning, Mike Hilgers, the state's attorney general, accused the parent company of brands like Chevrolet and Buick of collecting driving data on 14 million vehicles, "including many thousands of which belonged to Nebraskans," without their consent and while "making millions of dollars in the process."

Filed in Lancaster County District Court, the complaint alleges GM has since 2015 used its OnStar products and mobile apps to collect "highly specific" driving data before flipping it to third-party brokers who used the data to assign drivers "scores" that car insurance companies then paid to access.

Those companies, the complaint alleges, used the scores to make policy decisions, including increasing insurance premiums, canceling existing coverage for drivers or denying coverage entirely in what Hilgers called "a one-way racket" that exclusively harmed customers, never helping them save on insurance like some voluntary safe driver programs do.

"We know that you can actually do what these insurance companies and what companies like GM want to do legally, through consent, through notice, through disclosures," Hilgers said at a Tuesday morning Capitol news conference where he unveiled the litigation. "It's not what they did here."

General Motors did not immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday.

Hilgers' lawsuit makes Nebraska the second state in the country to sue GM over the alleged wrongdoing. Texas filed a similar suit in August.

The Federal Trade Commission in January reached a settlement with GM that would place a five-year ban on the automaker providing drivers' data to consumer reporting agencies.

Both states' lawsuits and the action by federal regulators followed an investigation by The New York Times that last March revealed GM and other automakers had collected and sold to insurers extensive records on customers' driving behaviors, prompting insurance premiums to soar.

In Tuesday's lawsuit, Hilgers alleged that data included the start and end time of drivers' trips, their speed, their seatbelt status and how far they drove. GM also developed "risk factors" that the third-party brokers used to calculate drivers' scores, Hilgers alleged.

Those factors included late-night driving, instances of sharp turns, hard braking, quick acceleration and driving more than 80 mph, according to the complaint.

Hilgers said the company used "emotional blackmail" to get customers to opt into OnStar and similar programs that allowed GM to collect the data, framing the add-ons as "necessary to help protect people's families (and) their own personal safety."

"It turned out none of that was really true," he said Tuesday. "It looks like the real purpose of this data was to sell to insurance companies to be able to impact people's rates."

And, he said, the company "was misleading in two respects," accusing GM of deceiving not only customers but also the third-party brokers who believed the automaker had consent to collect the data from their customers.

Instead, the lawsuit alleges that GM "at no point" clearly disclosed the data collection to customers in various terms-of-service agreements dating back to 2015.

It's unclear how many Nebraskans have been subjected to rate hikes or insurance cancellations as a result of GM's data collection. The lawsuit notes GM delivered 18,848 vehicles to 54 car dealerships in Nebraska in 2023 and has sold Nebraskans thousands of new cars since 2015.

Hilgers said his office would seek to better understand "the scope of the harm" as the case works its way through the courts.

"Was it 47,212 Nebraskans who were harmed? Was it 75,000 Nebraskans who were harmed? Was it 14,000 who had it canceled and another 46,000 who had insurance increase?" Hilgers said. "Were there other companies that they contract with? We don't know the answers to all those questions."