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Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

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Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#91

Post by cmurf »

SilasX wrote: post #33
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.

No, it (quite reasonably!) mandates that you must prove financial responsibility to a certain level[1] if you're going to pilot a two-ton hunk of metal at 70 mph around other people doing the same. That has the side effect of requiring the typical person to buy insurance, as they can't afford the alternate means of establishing it. Do you think that's somehow unreasonable? What standard would you prefer for determini…

Most any reasonable person can make ~$1500 a year investing that $35K. So it doesn't seem like such a good savings considering you won't make that money on investing it, and you're almost certain to lose a lot more than than $35K if you're at fault in an accident.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#92

Post by imglorp »

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…

And two more bubbles: long haul trucking and taxis.

Getting rid of drivers is a high priority for that industry. Human drivers are expensive and they can only drive 70 hours a week. [1]

Oh, and Uber is dying to get rid of all its drivers too. [2]

1. https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/new-hours-servi...

2. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/01/27/how-ubers-autono...

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#93

Post by heimatau »

Aelinsaar wrote: post #88
jimjimjim wrote: post #84

Good. just like universal unbreakable glass might hurt glaziers. just like getting people to commit less crimes might hurt for profit prisons. just like people not getting attacked might hurt self-defense courses. I realize this is perfect-world absolutist thinking but industries that exist because of something wrong in the world shouldn't have a right to exist when that wrong is removed.

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." -The Shirky Principle

Great quote. I call it corruption, self-preservation that hurts the masses, and status quo thinking. Technology is going to hopefully disrupt all of this.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#94

Post by erobbins »

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…

I really hate this association of aircraft and car autopilots.

Aircraft operate in essentially empty space, and barring major mechanical failure the pilots typically have tens of seconds up to many minutes to act to avoid disaster. In a car you often have less than a second to react, and certainly never more than 4-5.

Aircraft hardware and software is tested, retested, tested again, and certified. Auto hardware and software is pushed out the door with reckless disregard for reliability.

There is really no comparison.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#95

Post by city41 »

imglorp wrote: post #92
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…

And two more bubbles: long haul trucking and taxis. Getting rid of drivers is a high priority for that industry. Human drivers are expensive and they can only drive 70 hours a week. [1] Oh, and Uber is dying to get rid of all its drivers too. [2] 1. https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/new-hours-servi... 2. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/01/27/how-ubers-autono...

In a sense, the damage Uber and Lyft have already done to Taxis was a boon for them. They get some extra heads up that their industry is probably going to become defunct.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#96

Post by fwefeefew »

dexwiz wrote: post #60
JoshTriplett wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Completely unattended driving (enter destination and taking a nap) is still up for debate. Requiring a machine to be watched seems like a pretty easy-to-pass regulation. Requiring a human to watch implies a means for the human to intervene and take over. Having a human second-guess the machine will increase accidents. And having the controls available for the human to do so will increase complexity and decrease rel…

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…

> but do you really want to be in a machine that you have no control over?

Yes, it would almost definitely be safer than a lot of drivers I've been in the car with, if not all of them. And it's be far less nerve-wracking than with some drivers.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#97

Post by JoshTriplett »

pyre wrote: post #77
JoshTriplett wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

First, those pilots are heavily trained and certified, far more than car drivers. And second, far more accidents occur due to humans than due to mechanical failure (and of "mechanical failure", only a subset of those involve incorrect autopilot, though I haven't found that broken out). http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm puts total human causes at 67% (53% of which is pilot error), and mechanical failure at 20%.

Some accidents also occur specifically when pilots ignore/override the automatic systems; I'd be interested to see statistics on that, too, but I haven't found any.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#98

Post by carapace »

jimjimjim wrote: post #84

Good. just like universal unbreakable glass might hurt glaziers. just like getting people to commit less crimes might hurt for profit prisons. just like people not getting attacked might hurt self-defense courses. I realize this is perfect-world absolutist thinking but industries that exist because of something wrong in the world shouldn't have a right to exist when that wrong is removed.

I can't say that it isn't apocryphal, but the worst example I've ever heard of this was an ambulance-driver's union campaigning against a law that was expected to reduce accidents... As I say, I don't know if it was true or not. I hope not!

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#99

Post by Aelinsaar »

heimatau wrote: post #93
Aelinsaar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." -The Shirky Principle

Great quote. I call it corruption, self-preservation that hurts the masses, and status quo thinking. Technology is going to hopefully disrupt all of this.

It's the only thing that can, if history is any guide. Society and "ethics" are so often a function of our technology, however simple we now consider that tech to be.

Re: Driverless Cars Threaten to Crash Insurers’ Earnings

#100

Post by chjohasbrouck »

labster wrote: post #83
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…

Luckily the poors won't be able to afford to the new cars, so we can continue our campaign of oppression via infraction ticketing against them for quite some time.

The cost of owning a car (maintenance, financing, registration, license, insurance, tickets, parking, cleaning) will totally eclipse the cost of Lyft/Ubering a self-driving car, even (especially?) for the poor.

We're already to the point where if your commute is less than 8 miles or so, using Uber daily is cheaper than the cost of ownership on a $30k vehicle. Just imagine what self-driving cars will do to that equation.

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