Driverless Cars Will Kill Insurance Companies?

"pfftballer" (pfftballer) 02/28/2014 at 12:12 • Filed to: None

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Well !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . If it gets rid of or greatly reduces your insurance premium would that be a fair trade for your own autonomy?

Racescort666 > pfftballer 02/28/2014 at 12:16

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Interesting thought: It will kill insurance for individuals but it will be ridiculous for manufacturers. Have we established who is liable when an autonomous car crashes and injures someone?

offroadkarter > pfftballer 02/28/2014 at 12:16

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Unless they will lump it under a home or property policy, it can't 100% kill auto insurance. What about damage from nature, or theft? Not everything in an auto policy is just accidents.

Besides, computers DO fail! I'm in IT, I know this first hand lol

jariten1781 > pfftballer 02/28/2014 at 12:20

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Nah, it might kill the smaller ones, but the larger ones will just raise premiums on their other lines (home owners, renters, boats, whatever). Additionally, you'll still need insurance for theft/weather damage and they'll raise the prices on that. The companies would still be around.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > pfftballer 02/28/2014 at 12:24

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Reduction of premium for people who partake of a driverless car, maybe. Eliminate it all together? I think not, particularly not if significant portions of drivers won't see a reduction.

Please understand, I don't consider driverless cars a pure pipe dream, but anywhere outside significant infrastructure we're back to old-school driving with some certainty - not even counting significant fractions of people who want to drive themselves. You can innovate, but the fact that the first steps in driverless cars were taken over 60 years ago indicates a market that's not very heady. The fact is that tech to at least administer primitive slaving for a dedicated lane for commuters existed quite a few decades ago, and if people were willing to pay obscene amounts of money for the quite impractical in other areas in times past to bring them to the common man (microwaves, etc.), you can color me a skeptic of any sea change.

What it come down to is that people using "driverless cars" will still be driving... some. The extent to which they pinky-swear they will not be driving x% of the time may impact their insurance, but the unexpected will still happen with or without their direct input *to some extent*.

pfftballer > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/28/2014 at 12:28

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What if once driverless cars are available, insurance companies triple the premiums of those drivers who choose to drive themselves? Who could afford not to upgrade to a driverless car then?

I agree this change is still light years away, mostly for reasons sited in the linked article like loss of jobs and it's effect on out current "system."

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > pfftballer 02/28/2014 at 12:59

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Then they'll go out of business. You postulate a (presumed) risk-negligible insurance of driverless cars that will highlight a difference against the higher risk inherent (in theory) in a driven one, but if the "driverless" car is never truly driverless, it doesn't map. There's no conceivable way that the split between "mostly/half driverless" and "self-driven" cars actually would effect a negative difference in the makeup of the existing driver risk pool- a pool that insurance companies have shown themselves well able to operate in. Any insurance company that blinks and tries to increase rates *in comparison* to a "driverless" base to force their customer base in that direction will be abandoned without the presence of some type of bureaucratic forcing. That's why current "measures for safety" always take the form of a rate cut and not an increase on existing base - while they may intend to creep *overall* rates upwards to produce a penalty in effect, simple economics dictates that it cannot be severe, and that it cannot be their first action.

So yes, I can see higher rates in comparison, but variation in just how much by provider, and mostly based on reduction of one rather than increase of another. Actuary information has to take a back seat to having a customer base at some juncture. "Force self-drivers to convert via massive rate increase"? Only possible in a monopoly, or the de facto highly regulated government equivalent of one - minimum standards for policies set in total farce. Anyone proposing the latter, I heartily enjoin to fuck off, not that that's you.

There's also this: liability is the only highlighted topic within any reason. Incidental damage will still occur to vehicles, from the road, the elements, minimal failures of guidance (!), mechanically-induced variance incidents and damage, etc. etc. - possibly even insufficient coverage from the self-drivers! If you think insurance companies would expect to make their bread not upselling to cover those from liability plans if the price of those plans *situationally* drops, you're crazy.

Montalvo > pfftballer 02/28/2014 at 14:22

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For people who don't like to drive this is great. However someone will have to kill me and rip the keys from my death grip to stop me from driving.