New Jersey Gets $8.9 Million in the $220 Million GM Settlement Over Secret Sales of Driver Data
Investigators say General Motors sold years of Smart Driver data - speeds, braking, trips and seat-belt use - to brokers who passed it to insurers, sometimes enrolling drivers at dealerships without their knowledge. New Jersey's share of the 36-state settlement is $8.9 million, and GM must now get explicit consent.
Your car was reporting on you, and New Jersey is getting paid for it. The state will receive $8.9 million from a $220 million multistate settlement with General Motors, according to reporting by The Jersey Vindicator read by this desk, resolving allegations that the automaker violated consumer privacy laws by selling drivers' personal information to data brokers without their knowledge or consent. The settlement covers 36 attorneys general and was announced Thursday.
The investigation's account is specific. From 2016 to 2024, GM enrolled millions of customers in its Smart Driver program, promoted as a tool to help people improve their driving - with a promise, investigators say, that their information would not be shared with insurers without express consent. Instead, the data - how often people drove, when and where they traveled, whether they wore seat belts, how fast they drove and how hard they braked or accelerated - was sold to brokers under contracts that allowed its use for insurance products, and insurers used it to assess risk and, in some cases, raise premiums. Many enrollments happened at dealerships, sometimes without the buyer's knowledge, with employees accepting terms on customers' behalf; in one case, the company's app wrongly told 370,000 drivers they were not enrolled while their data was collected and sold. Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said in a statement: 'New Jersey drivers should not have to worry about their insurance rates going up as a result of their personal information being secretly sold to data brokers by the car company and its partners.'
The terms going forward are the consumer part of the story. Under the settlement, GM must obtain explicit consent before collecting or sharing driving and location data, limit its data collection, undergo privacy assessments and strengthen dealership oversight, with internal and external monitoring of its practices. GM discontinued Smart Driver after a 2024 New York Times investigation exposed the practices, and the company says the agreement addresses a product it ended in 2024 and reinforces steps it has taken on privacy - including a simplified privacy statement and a consumer privacy center. For New Jersey drivers, the practical lesson outlives the settlement: connected-car programs ask for data at the dealership desk, and the consent screen is now, by law, supposed to mean what it says.
