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Insurance Companies Looking For Fallback Plans To Survive Driverless Cars (csmonitor.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Driverless cars could mean a huge downsizing of the auto insurance industry, as the frequency of accidents declines and liability shifts from the driver to the vehicle's software or automaker. This is compounded by the rise of ride-sharing services. Once summoning a vehicle to take you somewhere isn't limited by the number of people available to drive them (and are correspondingly cheaper), car ownership is likely to decline. Many major automakers and tech companies are throwing billions of research dollars into making this happen, and insurance companies are trying to figure out how to survive. For example, a recent patent application shows State Farm is betting on collecting massive amounts of data about you. While they'll no doubt use it to set your insurance rates, they also plan to "send you advice, alerts, coupons or discounts on insurance or other goods and services." Traveler's Insurance is thinking along somewhat similar lines. They want to create "a device that offers specific suggestions for managing errands and other travel. Customers would be able to see a map of 'risk zone' data for places they want to go, such as stores, restaurants and roads. They could then plan the day 'with an eye toward how risky such endeavors may be,' according to the patent application."
They plan on monetizing this data with or without driverless cars.
as a longitme customer of these insurance companies i have this to say...
DONT find a way to survive you useless fucking leeches. You serve no purpose whatsoever, you are useless middlemen who profit from the suffering of others & add nothing beneficial to society.
Rather than finding a way to survive, you should curl up in a ball and die.
Its the best thing for everyone involved.
Exactly. Many states simply let you sue everyone remotely involved. I got hit by a drunk driver in a no-fault state. That dude sued the owner of the vehicle, the owner's insurance, their own insurance, me, and my insurance. After just 4 short years of litigating, they got a $1500 settlement out of my insurance company because I "didn't do enough to get out of their way" when they lost control of their vehicle and spun into me.
There's a "pain clinic" on every corner for a reason, just like there are back to back personal injury attorney commercials on tv every 5 minutes.
Are driverless cars really the big game changer for auto insurance?
I'm in Ontario, Canada and I just don't see how this is going to change things.
We already have 'no-fault' auto insurance, which basically means you buy car insurance to protect yourself and liability.
You don't go around suing the other drivers or anything. When you make a claim, you just deal with your own insurance company.
The rate you pay is still based on your risk.
So, we have driverless cars. You still buy insurance to protect yourself and liability.
Maybe some of the risk metrics change. Like cars with a better record of being driverless get lower rates? But that's no different than rating cars for safety today.
I suppose some countries might need to change how their auto-insurance works. Moving more towards no-fault insurance.
But it's not like the world doesn't have plenty of models to choose from that would better fit the driverless world.
They don't have to reinvent the wheel as far as I can tell.
Insurance, by design, is a sham and a scam.
If you think that then you would be wrong. Oh sure, there are insurance scams out there. But that is not the same things as insurance being a scam. Insurance is about mitigation of risk. Reducing the financial consequences of rare or severe events. Insurance is a very useful tool but if you don't use it properly then like most tools it might do more harm than good. People who are financially sophisticated typically have quite a lot of insurance and for good reason.
So by design, premiums MUST exceed payouts.
Not actually true. Premiums + Investment profits must exceed payouts over the long term. There are two parts to every insurance business. The premium payments you send in and then on the back end the insurance company invests those premiums. People don't typically see the investment side of the business but it's very important. Lots of insurance companies actually sell insurance at an underwriting loss but make a profit by investing the money. This isn't ideal from the insurance company's perspective but due to a competitive market it is sometimes necessary. There are more than a few insurance companies that have taken underwriting losses for many years in a row.
All insurance companies will take losses periodically but so long as they have sufficient reserves this is expected and acceptable. For risks where they lack adequate reserves insurance companies can get re-insurance (basically insurance for the insurance) for those events.
In reality, the only thing insurance protects you from that you couldn't do on your own are the extreme situations.
Insurance is for extreme events but it also can be to mitigate damage for events that you can afford to deal with. For example I have dental insurance. I am perfectly capable of paying out of pocket for any dental procedure I am ever likely to have but my dental insurance helps me mitigate the cost so pay a little up front to come out ahead in the long run. It ensures that the insurance company works when negotiating rates with the dentist so I get better rates than I could negotiate on my own.
What a terrible thing to say. My family would never drink Bud Light.