4 ms·
That's great news. I wonder how much insurance rates will go down when autonomous vehicles get popular. Seems like the liability portion could go way down.
by floxy 1y ago
That's great news. I wonder how much insurance rates will go down when autonomous vehicles get popular. Seems like the liability portion could go way down.
- xnx 1y agoIt's a 3x effect for insurance agencies: 1) Google/Waymo doesn't buy insurance for their vehicles 2) Waymo vehicles are much less likely to cause accidents 3) Waymo vehicles actively avoid being hit and calm traffic overall
- ziddoap 1y agoI'm not super familiar with this space, or laws where Waymo is active, what do you mean Google/Waymo don't buy insurance for their vehicles? Is having insurance not legally required? Do they just pay out when there's an accident where they injure someone?
- jmm5 1y agoLarge companies with fleets of vehicles often self-insure.
- ziddoap 1y agoInteresting! When I was much younger, I worked for a couple companies that had (what I would consider) large fleets of vehicles, and they all were insured through an insurance company. I guess I just assumed that's how it was. I wasn't aware self-insuring was a possibility. Thanks.
- floxy 1y agoSelf-driving is probably still new enough that insurance companies wouldn't have good actuarial data to properly price the risks, so they'd just have to charge exorbitant rates.
- bluGill 1y agoCompanies can self insure. That doesn't mean they have to. Your accountant can run the numbers to figure out if it is worth it. Often self insure means they still pay an insurance company to handle the paperwork, but when there is a claim the company pays it.
- lesuorac 1y agoWhile I'm not sure of the specifics for car insurance. For health care, a lot of large companies technically have say Anthem or whatever but the company pays out all of the claims and it's just administered by Anthem. So you may have seen a similar thing where all claims were handled by say Geico but it's not Geico's pot of money paying out claims.
- pavon 1y agoIn many states, including CA, individuals can post a bond instead of carrying insurance. Companies with fleets of vehicles can also self-insure. In both cases the car owner is liable to pay any damages that insurance would normally pay.
- pests 1y agoIt has been classic lore that Bill Gates couldn't get anyone to insure him after his younger years (see classic mugshot photo used as the silhouette) so he had to self insure. Not sure if completely true but I remember the stories.
- AIPedant 1y agoThe problem is that Waymos can't replace cars (or even Ubers!) since they depend on human oversight and problem-solving. Even at a 20:1 ratio it is not feasible for autonomous vehicles to employ 10m people to account for every American on the road.
- Scaevolus 1y agoThe human oversight is mostly to tell off people breaking rules in the cars, not to fix the driving, and is quite easy to automate as they scale.
- AIPedant 1y agoThat might be what human overseers are mostly doing minute-to-minute but it's not why it's necessary. The problem is AI simply does not have the real-world problem solving ability to handle all the minor inconveniences and surprises on the road.
- josefritzishere 1y agoThis does not sound scalable.
- worldsayshi 1y agoWhy can't it replace Ubers?
- ttoinou 1y agoThose people dont have to be americans though
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- IrishTechie 1y agoAmericans only spend 3% of their time driving, so it's maybe closer to 300k than 10m. Still not scalable at that though so the key will be driving that 20:1 up, which seems very possible given enough time.