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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."
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.