Self Driving Car Insurance • Hacker News Board

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#171

Post by FrankWilhoit » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

jgbuddy wrote: post #8

FrankWilhoit wrote: post #2

One's first thought is that they ought to be running away from underwriting this as fast as they can go. But then one realizes that it is all profit -- they need never pay a claim, because in accidents involving autonomous vehicles, it will never be possible to establish fault; and then one sees that the primary purpose of most automations is to obscure responsibility.

> and then one sees that the primary purpose of most automations is to obscure responsibility. Are you saying that the investments in FSD by tesla have been with the goal of letting drivers get a way with accidents? The law is black and white

What is the "driver"? Who wrote which line of the software? Who tested it? Who approved its deployment? The rest is lawyers.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#172

Post by bmsleight_ » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:07 PM UTC

philip1209 wrote: post #168

I was curious what the break-even is where the insurance discount covers the $99/mo FSD subscription. I got a Lemonade quote around $240/mo (12k mi/yr lease on a Model 3), so 50% off would save ~$120/mo - i.e. it would cover FSD and still leave ~$21/mo net. Or, "free FSD is you use it". I believe, at the end of the day, insurance companies will be the ones driving FSD adoption. The media will sensationalize the outli…

Yep - the way to get adoption, whilst the bar is too high for self-driving cars, the bar should be safer than the average person. An old greying socialist - saying that capitalism drive the right outcomes. Same with low-carbon, insurance will help with climate change mitigation.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#173

Post by charcircuit » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:08 PM UTC

jasoncartwright wrote: post #5

If it autonomous or self-driving then why is the person in the car paying for the insurance? Surely if it's Tesla making the decisions, they need the insurance?

Not all insurance claims are based off of the choices of the driver.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#174

Post by notahacker » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:09 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #138

cs702 wrote: post #63

TL;DR: 50% insurance discount for Tesla vehicles driven by Tesla FSD. On the surface, this looks like an endorsement of Tesla's claims about FSD safety.

Assuming the non-discounted rates are market-competitive.

And that the sort of miles accrued when using FSD in Arizona aren't >50% less likely to result in a claim than the average mile driven regardless of who's driving

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#175

Post by ErroneousBosh » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:11 PM UTC

qwerpy wrote: post #160

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not successfully.

Successful enough for me and many other people I know. End to end from my house to grocery store, kids schools, friends houses, etc. Multiple times per day for the past year. It’s not perfect but I’d consider it a smashing success for something I rely on for safely transporting my family every day.

I wouldn't feel safe in one. I've seen how they drive, and I've had a brief shot of a car with FSD.

They are not safe and they will never be safe.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#176

Post by justapassenger » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:12 PM UTC

I'm 200% sure it's subsidized by Tesla and they have a deal that any losses they'd get Tesla is going to pay Lemonade for them.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#177

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:13 PM UTC

microtherion wrote: post #170

I'm quite skeptical of Tesla's reliability claims. But for exactly that reason, I welcome a company like Lemonade betting actual money on those claims. Either way, this is bound to generate some visibility into the actual accident rates.

> quite skeptical of Tesla's reliability claims

I'm sceptical of Robotaxi/Cybercab. I'm less sceptical that FSD, supervised, is safer than fully-manual control.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#178

Post by gffrd » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:13 PM UTC

koakuma-chan wrote: post #155

DaSHacka wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All according to plan

It already doesn't make sense to own a car for me. It's cheaper to just call an Uber.

For some this is the case. For others, this is not the case.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#179

Post by iwontberude » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

jasoncartwright wrote: post #13

jgbuddy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the operator is liable? Tesla as a company isn't driving the car, it's a ML model running on something like HW4 on bare metal in the car itself. Would that make the silicon die legally liable?

Sounds like it's neither self-driving, nor autonomous, if I'm on the hook if it goes wrong.

Especially since they can push regressions over the air and you could be lulled into a sense of safety and robustness that isn’t there and bam you pay the costs of the regressions, not Tesla.

Re: Self Driving Car Insurance

#180

Post by dfabulich » Fri, Jan 30, 2026, 11:14 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #140

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, in some cities that have near grid-lock rush-hour traffic - there's between 50-100%+ as many people traveling by bus as by car. If all of those people switch to cars, you end up with it taking an hour to travel 1 mile by car. It's almost as if they have busses for a reason.

First, these cities should be fixed by removing the traffic magnets. It's far past the point where we used the old obsolete ideology of trying to supply as much traffic capacity as possible. But anyway, your statement is actually not true anywhere in the US except NYC. Even in Chicago, removing ALL the local transit and switching to 6-seater minivans will eliminate all the traffic issues.

6-seater self-driving municipal minivans would be fantastic, too. (I would still call that a "bus", but I don't care what we call it.)