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Will Self-Driving Cars Destroy the Auto Insurance Industry? (siliconvalley.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article from the Bay Area News Group:
Imagine your fully autonomous self-driving car totals a minivan. Who pays for the damages? "There wouldn't be any liability on you, because you're just like a passenger in a taxi," says Santa Clara University law professor Robert Peterson. Instead, the manufacturer of your car or its software would probably be on the hook... Virtually everything around car insurance is expected to change, from who owns the vehicles to who must carry insurance to who -- or what -- is held responsible for causing damage, injuries and death in an accident."
Ironically, if you're only driving a semi-autonomous car, "you could end up in court fighting to prove the car did wrong, not you," according to the article. Will human drivers be considered a liability -- by insurers, and even by car owners? The article notes that Google is already testing a car with no user-controlled brake pedal or steering wheel. Of course, one consumer analyst warns the newspaper that "hackers will remain a risk, necessitating insurance coverage for hostile takeover of automated systems..."
They can sell anything.
What will happen is that many municipalities will see a dramatic loss of income from traffic and parking* violations. That could indeed be devastating. People are gonna have to fire up the old still and go back to bootlegging to make a couple of bucks.
*since the car can go off to find a space by itself, or simply drive around the block a few times.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From: https://www.google.com/selfdri...
We've self-driven more than 1.5 million miles and are currently out on the streets of Mountain View, CA, Austin, TX, Kirkland, WA and Metro Phoenix, AZ.
It sounds like they have actual cars, driving actual miles, in actual cities. I've also had a coworker who was driving in the Bay Area see one of their cars go by him on the highway - with no one driving.
Now, they might not replace all cars, but even eliminating regular cars in major cities will dramatically change things. Imagine the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Chicago and DC with less than half the cars they have now (due to people sharing, etc.). Suddenly, rush hour isn't a nightmare, and parking spots don't need to sell for $10k/year since it would be cheaper to send your car home instead of parking it - and then it is available for your spouse/child/family member to use, instead of it being parking in a parking ramp downtown. Plus, you could send your car to drive your child to before- and after-school activities instead of doing it yourself.
"Christine, go pick up Carrie from school and drive her to swim practice and then park and wait for her to finish. Then drive her home without stopping at Dairy Queen. (Yes, I named the car Christine.)
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Christine, go pick up Carrie from school and drive her to swim practice and then park and wait for her to finish.
Are you trying to warn us of the consequences of self driving cars?
Christine (1983)
Carrie (1979)
A lot of people are looking at scenarios in which ordinary people won't own a car. Instead, they expect that people will subscribe to a car service. In that case, the car service will mostly self-insure.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Insurance companies don't make money off of insurance policies. They aim to pay back out $0.95-$1.05 (most have a $0.99 goal when you factor in overhead) for every $1.00 they take in. They make money off the float (The interest for investing premium while waiting to make claim payments), which is why Warren loves owning insurance companies.