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Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. The really serious accidents result in millions of dollars in damages (especially when law

by abalone 10y ago

Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. The really serious accidents result in millions of dollars in damages (especially when lawsuits are involved). What would have been isolated to a personal backruptcy is now concentrated on the autonomous auto manufacturer. As for criminal charges, the key question is whether a bad bug can constitute negligence. That will no doubt be tested in courts when lives have been lost.

maxerickson 10y ago
Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. What does 'fully insured' mean here? A sensible approach is to have liability coverage sufficient to protect your assets. That might be a lot more coverage than the legal minimum, but a large personal umbrella policy might be hundreds of dollars a year. People go bankrupt because they skimp on insurance, not because it is onerously expensive.
- abalone 10y ago
  > What does 'fully insured' mean here?... People go bankrupt because they skimp on insurance Not necessarily. Even "large" policies will not protect your assets from the worst cases where damages run into the millions of dollars, e.g. where you kill a family or hospitalize someone for months. You propose that everyone with coverage less than "sufficient to protect your assets" is guilty of being "under insured". But there is no amount of coverage you can pre-determine to protect your assets in all possible cases. Not unless you purchase a policy with no upper limit -- but those are rare in the auto insurance world. Thus, even if you have a "large" policy that falls on the high end of typical coverage limits, truly catastrophic cases often result in personal bankruptcies. Bankruptcy courts cap the payouts. There are no such caps on auto manufacturers responsible for accidents... unless they go bankrupt too.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I'm pretty skeptical that there are a large number of these huge claims. I tried looking for some info about it but it gets obscured by advertising for liability insurance. I would expect many of the largest settlements to involve negligence like drunk driving or excessive speed (a system might have the wrong speed for a stretch of road, but it mostly will have accurate speeds). Of course there are also ways that a driving system could be implemented negligently that don't apply to a human driver (but I sort of expect the licensing process to address that).
    - abalone 10y ago
      The idea that a EULA will protect manufacturers from lawsuits over injury and death due to their error is complete hand wavy fantasy. No such precedent exists. You need only look up the average cost of a major hospitalization to gauge what the at-fault party is responsible for. They can run into the millions.[1] That's before we even get to tort damages awarded by a court for things like negligence (and you're certainly right that those can be even higher). [1] http://www.rslfunding.com/whats-the-average-car-accident-settlement/ http://www.rslfunding.com/whats-the-average-car-accident-set...
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        By licensing I meant the state granting a license for the system to operate on public roads. It won't be individuals signing away their rights, it will be the state declaring what rights they have. Also, I'm sure there are large claims. My contention is that there aren't a lot of them.

by abalone 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

Even if fully insured, most policies have a limit under $100k/person. What does 'fully insured' mean here? A sensible approach is to have liability coverage sufficient to protect your assets. That might be a lot more coverage than the legal minimum, but a large personal umbrella policy might be hundreds of dollars a year. People go bankrupt because they skimp on insurance, not because it is onerously expensive.

abalone 10y ago
> What does 'fully insured' mean here?... People go bankrupt because they skimp on insurance Not necessarily. Even "large" policies will not protect your assets from the worst cases where damages run into the millions of dollars, e.g. where you kill a family or hospitalize someone for months. You propose that everyone with coverage less than "sufficient to protect your assets" is guilty of being "under insured". But there is no amount of coverage you can pre-determine to protect your assets in all possible cases. Not unless you purchase a policy with no upper limit -- but those are rare in the auto insurance world. Thus, even if you have a "large" policy that falls on the high end of typical coverage limits, truly catastrophic cases often result in personal bankruptcies. Bankruptcy courts cap the payouts. There are no such caps on auto manufacturers responsible for accidents... unless they go bankrupt too.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I'm pretty skeptical that there are a large number of these huge claims. I tried looking for some info about it but it gets obscured by advertising for liability insurance. I would expect many of the largest settlements to involve negligence like drunk driving or excessive speed (a system might have the wrong speed for a stretch of road, but it mostly will have accurate speeds). Of course there are also ways that a driving system could be implemented negligently that don't apply to a human driver (but I sort of expect the licensing process to address that).
  - abalone 10y ago
    The idea that a EULA will protect manufacturers from lawsuits over injury and death due to their error is complete hand wavy fantasy. No such precedent exists. You need only look up the average cost of a major hospitalization to gauge what the at-fault party is responsible for. They can run into the millions.[1] That's before we even get to tort damages awarded by a court for things like negligence (and you're certainly right that those can be even higher). [1] http://www.rslfunding.com/whats-the-average-car-accident-settlement/ http://www.rslfunding.com/whats-the-average-car-accident-set...
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      By licensing I meant the state granting a license for the system to operate on public roads. It won't be individuals signing away their rights, it will be the state declaring what rights they have. Also, I'm sure there are large claims. My contention is that there aren't a lot of them.