Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 125 posts

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#71

Post by busyant »

dragonwriter wrote: post #20
tw04 wrote: post #3

Why would they lower prices? The government mandates we MUST have insurance, so they know they've got a continued source of business. They'll simply increase profits. The average American has absolutely no way to correlate the amount they pay for insurance to what it costs the insurance company.

> The government mandates we MUST have insurance Actually, in California, the government does not. You must have either a certain specified minimum level of insurance or a post a specified minimum surety bond.

This sounds like a distinction without much of a difference.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#72

Post by unprepare »

ryandrake wrote: post #38
paulmd wrote: post #9

The other bubble that driverless cars are going to pop is ticket revenue. There are a lot of police departments and cities who have structured a lot of their budget on heavy-handed enforcement of motorists. That's going to decline significantly once driverless cars are scrupulously following the rules of the road. And any tickets that get written will be going against a giant corporation like Google, with detailed in…

What makes you think Google will fight my ticket on my behalf? Surely, it would benefit them to have traffic laws written to clarify that the occupant is still liable for any laws his self-driving car breaks. Also, as the other commenter said, the laws will adapt. The purpose of traffic laws is to maintain $X level of revenue, so if revenue starts to drop, local governments will increase the number and complexity of…

>local governments will increase the number and complexity of traffic laws until revenue is back to the expected level

creating a competitive advantage for least ticketed cars.

why wouldnt google just constantly update the software to comply with all applicable laws at all times? or Ford or Tesla

certainly Uber would have an interest in software that would follow all applicable laws, given the impression your robot driver getting pulled over would give to a passenger.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#73

Post by undersuit »

hyperbovine wrote: post #40
undersuit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free Market is the US does not contain a well-informed consumer segment. That is the issue of the second sentence. >N.b. Personally, I am much happier knowing that (almost) all the people potentially plowing into me on the highway carry insurance. Do you live in the US? Where 1 in 7 drivers are uninsured?

> Free Market is the US does not contain a well-informed consumer segment. So the claim boils boils down to, people don't know how to shop around for auto insurance? Forgive me for scoffing. And 1 in 7 is a lot lower than it would be otherwise.

Just because I can buy the same product from a number of different stores doesn't make me a well-informed consumer.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#74

Post by undersuit »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #69
dragonwriter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually sounds like a somewhat outdated (the trend is down and the most recent figure I can find is about 1 in 8 [0], rather than 1 in 7) figure derived from insurance claims (which may systematically misstate the share of drivers or driver/vehicle pairs, but probably is reasonably accurate in determining what people actually care about -- if I need to go after someone for damages resulting from an accident, will…

How do they define "uninsured." My girlfriend isn't on my policy because she never drives my truck. Likewise the vast majority of the time I drive her car it's something along the lines of repositioning vehicles in the driveway. If I were to get in an accident in her car chances are there'd be a bunch of fighting with insurance but our insurance (same company, different policies) would probably wind up paying. Would…

"Percentage of uninsured drivers, as measured by the ratio of uninsured motorists (UM) claims to bodily injury (BI) claim frequencies."

This holds for my outdated one in seven number and the new 12.6% that GP linked.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#75

Post by arikrak »

paulmd wrote: post #9

The other bubble that driverless cars are going to pop is ticket revenue. There are a lot of police departments and cities who have structured a lot of their budget on heavy-handed enforcement of motorists. That's going to decline significantly once driverless cars are scrupulously following the rules of the road. And any tickets that get written will be going against a giant corporation like Google, with detailed in…

They'll also be able to automatically track cars speeding so maybe they'll just be the equivalent of a tax if you want to go faster.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#76

Post by ChuckMcM »

elgabogringo wrote: post #5

The article's title is a little misleading. This would shrink the market as a whole. Revenue would go down and earnings would go down as a result. However , it wouldn't have to affect profitability. In fact, profitability would probably go up on these policies initially since the safety benefit would be immediate, but the implied risk in the policies would only come down over time as the safety works it's way into st…

I disagree it was misleading. The reasoning is pretty straight forward; cars become safer and so insurers can offer lower premiums when 1/3 of your revenue goes away your earnings are harder to make.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#77

Post by pyre »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #68
dexwiz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many regulations are of questionable validity, but do you really want to be in a machine that you have no control over? Would robotic drivers be better at things like merging, keeping distance, not over correcting? Yes. But people will still want to intervene when it doing something dumb like driving into a pond, or gets stuck on a median and cannot figure out how to get off. Driverless cars will probably not be magi…

> do you really want to be in a machine that you have no control over Yes. I regularly fly in planes, which I have no control over, and which spend most of their time on autopilot. I also regularly deal with machines that do their jobs far better than I could, and I feel no desire to take over and do those jobs worse. Why should that answer change when the stakes get higher and the cost of a mistake goes up ? (That d…

> Yes. I regularly fly in planes, which I have no control over, and which spend most of their time on autopilot.

Those planes with their auto-pilot system still have a means for the pilots to intervene. That's not quite the same as being in a vehicle for which no human has the possibility of intervening. (It's also a bit disingenuous to imply that it is.)

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#78

Post by dragonwriter »

busyant wrote: post #71
dragonwriter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The government mandates we MUST have insurance Actually, in California, the government does not. You must have either a certain specified minimum level of insurance or a post a specified minimum surety bond.

This sounds like a distinction without much of a difference.

It makes a difference because insurance companies don't have unlimited ability (even collectively) to set prices, since there if an alternative that they don't control.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#79

Post by pyre »

dexwiz wrote: post #58
paulmd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is purely opinion-based, but I think the problem is primarily local/city-level. That's where most of the current problem with ticket farming happens, and once driverless cars are commercially available I think it will be relatively unpalatable to ban them at a state level or higher.

You can pass traffic laws that target driverless cars without outright banning them. The cronies at a local/city-level that pass laws to turn traffic into a source of income have friends in state and federal. Or move to the state/federal level. Is the Federal government immune from passing similar laws?

If this sort of thing becomes common enough at the local-/start-level, I can see it becoming a legal battlefield for the companies that stand to benefit from driverless cars.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#80

Post by pyre »

seizethecheese wrote: post #59
ryandrake wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect it would be cheaper in the long run for those large companies to influence laws to move ticket liability over to their customers rather than take on the expense of fighting traffic tickets themselves.

Possibly, but that's assuming no aspect of consumer choice in the survival of ride hailing systems. If customers had to worry about tickets, they would quickly migrate to a competitor which assumed liability.

The same way that competition ensures things like Net Neutrality because consumers vote with their wallets?
Post reply on HN