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Self-driving taxis are in principle way cheaper to operate than human-driven taxis. They never have to stop, they can operate at all hours, there's no cost to p
by JCzynski 10y ago
Self-driving taxis are in principle way cheaper to operate than human-driven taxis. They never have to stop, they can operate at all hours, there's no cost to pay drivers, and if they do stop they can do it somewhere very cheap.
And when self-driving cars are a viable option, insurance will strongly encourage it. And by strongly encourage it I probably mean "absurdly high fees for driving your own car", because people are much worse drivers. Which should drive up the price of car ownership significantly. The increased cost to car storage in populated areas will probably lag a long while behind, so the second cliff will be much slower to hit.
- ghaff 10y agoI can buy cars with better safety systems being cheaper to insure, whether you're talking assistive driving systems or something more. But why would the existence of cars with better systems make driving vehicles like most people own today more expensive than currently?
- dragonwriter 10y ago> But why would the existence of cars with better systems make driving vehicles like most people own today more expensive than currently? Safer options will, as they become available, be disproportionately chosen by the safety conscious. This can, potentially, make the less-safe legacy option more dangerous (per use) than before the safer option became available, because the safest users of the less-safe option before the new one are users of the new option afterward, and no longer bringing the average risk of the old option down.
- kcanini 10y agoConversely, if a significant proportion of the cars on the road are autonomous and safer than human-driven cars, then the accident rate for everyone could decline, making insurance cheaper for both autonomous and human-driven cars.
- crazybigdan 10y agoWouldn't that make insurance cheaper for autonomous cars and more expensive for human-driven cars since humans would be more of a liability behind the wheel?
- ghaff 10y agoThe comparison isn't between cars with assistive/autonomous systems and those without. It's between cars without those systems some decades hence and those without such systems today. Why should the existence of such systems make driving by humans more expensive than it is today?
- nsgi 10y agoNot necessarily. You could equally argue that self-driving cars will be more popular among bad drivers.
- exit 10y agoletting humans drive cars is insane. i'm not paying into your insurance pool.
- greedo 10y agoThis is a frequent argument I keep seeing about the cost of insurance rising as autonomous vehicles are introduced. There's no reason they'll rise past what they're currently charging; insurance takes into account current risk. In the future, the risk if anything should decrease.
- laurentoget 10y agoThe risk may decrease but liability may increase, as this is a risk you are taking deliberately if you decide to drive your car instead of getting a safe self driving car like everybody else.
- greedo 10y agoInsurance doesn't work that way. Liability isn't an ephemeral concept, it's the chance of a claim X the amount of a claim, pooled in a group of buyers with differing risks. The relative cost of insurance compared to an autonomous vehicle should increase, but not the dollar amount.
- laurentoget 10y agoCar accidents kill people. The amount of those claims is not fixed and will increase when every fatality can lead to a wrongful death civil case.