Will Autonomous Cars Be the Insurance Industry's Napster Moment? 231
An anonymous reader writes: Most of us are looking forward to the advent of autonomous vehicles. Not only will they free up a lot of time previously spent staring at the bumper of the car in front of you, they'll also presumably make commuting a lot safer. While that's great news for the 30,000+ people who die in traffic accidents every year in the U.S. alone, it may not be great news for insurance companies. Granted, they'll have to pay out a lot less money with the lower number of claims, but premiums will necessarily drop as well and the overall amount of money within the car insurance system will dwindle.
Analysts are warning these companies that their business is going to shrink. It will be interesting to see if they adapt to the change, or cling desperately to an outdated business model like the entertainment industry did. "One opportunity for the industry could be selling more coverage to carmakers and other companies developing the automated features for cars. ... When the technology fails, manufacturers could get stuck with big liabilities that they will want to cover by buying more insurance. There's also a potential for cars to get hacked as they become more networked."
Analysts are warning these companies that their business is going to shrink. It will be interesting to see if they adapt to the change, or cling desperately to an outdated business model like the entertainment industry did. "One opportunity for the industry could be selling more coverage to carmakers and other companies developing the automated features for cars. ... When the technology fails, manufacturers could get stuck with big liabilities that they will want to cover by buying more insurance. There's also a potential for cars to get hacked as they become more networked."
Balancing Act (Score:5, Informative)
Insurance is all about a balancing act between charging enough premiums to cover the pay outs as well as whatever profits the company can get away with. Autonomous cars will probably not be able to get away with a zero liability claim, so there will still be a smaller premium to be charged to go along with those smaller payouts.
Re:Balancing Act (Score:5, Insightful)
as well as whatever profits the company can get away with
Insurance companies are regulated by the states which cap their profits. It isn't about what they can get away with, they get what they are allowed. That is the devil's bargain they make for being the provider of a product required by law.
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I imagine that in some jurisdictions competition affects pricing - though, not mine. I get crown corporation, monopoly provider car insurance - it might actually be a fair price. There are pro's and con's to it.
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I'm guessing you're in Saskatchewan. I put my details into the calculator they have (which only asks for the vehicle make, model, year, and my safety rating) and it was over $200 cheaper than my insurance and plate registration in Ontario. Even with a 0 safety rating, it was about $50 cheaper. I also remember checking the rate in Saskatchewan back when I was a younger driver. It was close to $3000 cheaper then.
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There are other issues that you are insured for as well. Such as Window damage, chances are they can cover flat tires, and issues that may occur due to less then stellar maintenance. As less people will be directly driving the cars, they may not notice issues in performance as well.
HAHAHAHA! (Score:4, Insightful)
but premiums will necessarily drop as well and the overall amount of money within the car insurance system will dwindle.
You have no idea how this works, does you? How much you pay for a service has nothing to do with how much it costs to provide a service. It's a matter of how much the market will bear. Why else do you think there are rubes out there still paying for text messages?
And the auto industry has it good, at least here in the states... I don't think there is anyplace it's legal to drive without insurance. They got you coming and going.
Re:HAHAHAHA! (Score:4, Informative)
New Hampshire does not require auto insurance.
Re:HAHAHAHA! (Score:4, Informative)
Yet still New Hampshire has one of the lowest rates of uninsured drivers at 11%. Mind you, if you opt to not get insurance, you are still on the hook for costs of bodily injury or property damage resulting from a car accident you caused.
Personally, I think that car insurance, like house insurance is one of those things you are stupid not to get, even if it isn't required. You stand to lose a whole lot of money if something goes wrong. In the case of a car, that could be accidentally running over a person or crashing into expensive property. In the case of a house, if your house catches on fire, or somebody steals all your stuff. There cost of liability and theft insurance is usually very low for houses and cars, and it's pretty stupid to not get it, even if it isn't mandatory by law.
Re:HAHAHAHA! (Score:4, Interesting)
The state doesn't require it, but the banks do if you have a loan on the car. Same thing if you're leasing. That probably accounts for a large portion of those carrying insurance. I tended to carry insurance anyway even when the vehicle was paid off because the risk versus the cost made sense. The state can require individual motorists to have insurance if they do cause damage and are found to not have the finances to cover the loss.
This whole topic seems silly though. Driving is way too complicated for cars to be driving themselves anytime soon. This is going to be one of those things that's always ten years away.
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If they'd build SkyTran, then a lot of people wouldn't need either manually-driven or automated cars to get to work, or anyplace else if they don't need to haul a bunch of kids or cargo. SkyTran isn't that complicated because it's confined to suspended rails, so it doesn't have to worry about other traffic (the system knows where all the cars are, and extra safety systems keep track of cars in front and behind on the same rail), there's no intersections, no worries about kids running out into traffic (sinc
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I would love to see how an autonomous car drives in snow/ice/rain. Is it going to have some kind of sensor that knows what conditions it is dealing with? What about the havoc an active snow storm will cause on all the cameras, how will it deal with that? Rain and snow also show up on radar, which many cars use for their situational awareness, this could cause issues. I also kind of wonder how well radar would work in an RF noisy environment such as a traffic jam of autonomous cars.
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I would love to see how an autonomous car drives in snow/ice/rain.
Better than humans with little experience. It's also quite likely that if the autonomous cars didn't handle it well, people might just end up not caring and not drive/ride around during those times.
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There are conditions where it helps to have some speed, especially climbing hills. You also don't want to be riding the brakes on icy surfaces. One numb-nut does that, and next thing you know, everyone is going off the road. Much simpler traction control systems haven't even perfected this yet, let alone how to drive when the signs and lane markers are covered by snow and ice. Maybe self driving cars will be a warmer climate thing long before it's common in the north.
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When the signs and lane markers are covered by snow and ice it will just default to using the same markers everyone else is using; the crashed cars driven by idiot humans who thought they could see the lane markers.
Seriously though, no autonomous vehicle would be dependent on lane markers as the sole feature for positioning, you need to use a multitude of inputs ranging from using markers to using LIDAR to map geometry of the area, through projection of probable trajectories and even to using prior knowledg
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Yet still New Hampshire has one of the lowest rates of uninsured drivers at 11%.
I truly believe that this is because of the cost of liability insurance in NH. I moved here from Arlington MA (and previously RI) and insurance rates in RI and MA are quite high. If it's affordable to more people, obviously more will buy it.
It's certainly not because NH drivers are any better than Massholes or "FRIDs" (Friggin' RI Drivers) from what I've seen. Especially around here in Concord. Tailgating seems to be the st
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Oh, and the guy with flags and straight pipes on his POS pickup truck: If I ever find you parked on my street, I'm ripping out your valve stems with a Vise-Grip(TM). Jerk.
No, no. Foam insulation from a can, applied in the tail pipe judiciously to leave enough exhaust flow to sort of let the truck running. If you use the extension nozzle, he won't see this until he has disassembled the rest of the engine.
Subtlety is important. Even if he doesn't get it. And of course, there is always the concentrated sugar gas treatment. It's got electrolytes!
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Did I mention that we don't require a permit for firearms for open carry?
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> How much you pay for a service has nothing to do with how much it costs to provide a service
Competition drives prices down. So there is a direct correlative effect in non-regulated/monopolized markets. I don't believe there is a car insurance price regulation in effect in the US.
Re:HAHAHAHA! (Score:5, Interesting)
"You have no idea how this works, does you?"
Well, Actually you're both wrong. I have several family members, and family friends at various levels in the insurance business. Two aunts are agents, a family friend owns an independent agency, and one uncle used to work for an insurance company.
Insurance is a HIGHLY regulated industry. By state law, and I can only speak to Oregon and Washington because that's where my family is, the total sum of premiums minus claims must be at or near zero at the end of the fiscal year.
Your next question is "How do they make money?" I know it was my first question when I learned this. Very simply put, they invest the premiums on the open market until they are needed for a payout. Essentially, the insurance companies make money earning interest on the premiums you've paid. They are able to hold those investments for longer periods of time by re-insuring (insurance company A buys insurance from insurance company B to cover payouts) to squeeze just a little more profit out from the investments.
So, here's the rub. Legally speaking, if claims take a dramatic dive, so must premiums. Granted, it won't happen over night, but it must happen. If the insurance company is keeping too much of the premiums, there will be problems with the state regulators. This means there will be less money for the insurance company to invest, thus less interest to earn. While the premium minus claim sum will remain the same, all the profit in the middle will disappear.
Without a drastic change in operation, business model, or something, this could mean real problems for an insurance company. If you think the mergers going on now in the telecom / entertainment industries are something, wait until the crunch hits insurers. It's entirely conceivable that when all the dust settles there could be one or two major auto insurance companies, and that's about it.
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they invest the premiums on the open market
So what you're saying, is that the coming downsizing of the auto-insurance industry could, ahem, *crash* the stock market...
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Yes, but a more apt comparison would be to look at the rise in small computer companies (Microsoft, now Apple) at the expense of big computer companies (DEC, Unisys, Honeywell, IBM.)
A formerly popular product replaced by a much lower cost product kills or emasculates some companies but new companies pop up to take advantage of the cash flow available to spend on other things that are needed and now affordable.
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Look up your state department of insurance (if you're in the US). Personal auto insurance is heavily regulated. When they establish premiums, insurance companies have to provide loss triangles, expense info and more, in detail, to the state DOI. There are teams of actuaries that put these filings together. The DOI has their own actuaries that carefully examine this data and check for a number of things including, but not limited to:
1. Is the insurance company charging enough to remain solvent in both li
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but premiums will necessarily drop as well and the overall amount of money within the car insurance system will dwindle.
You have no idea how this works, does you? How much you pay for a service has nothing to do with how much it costs to provide a service. It's a matter of how much the market will bear.
Exactly right. If you think insurance premiums will go down significantly, if at all, you're being extremely naive.
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Virginia doesn't require insurance. You have to pay a $500 fee to the state, but it's not insurance and doesn't cover anything.
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Virginia doesn't require insurance. You have to pay a $500 fee to the state, but it's not insurance and doesn't cover anything.
Wow. The perfect tax. You pay the state and you get absolutely nothing in return. I hope other states don't pick up on this.
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Texas, one can be self-insured by ponying up a $55,000 bond to the state, or posting a bond that a lien can be placed on one's real estate.
Honestly, I'll just take the insurance. $55k isn't a lot, relatively. Tap a car, and that is often less than the medical bills of the driver + the vehicle (which likely would wind up having to be replaced.) Plus, insurance companies provide lawyers while without them, you have to provide your own and fight all court cases yourself, which can be a major time waster.
As
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I would be genuinely surprised if rates drop
I would be very surprised if they don't. Rates are based on claims paid and if claims go down significantly then the insurers will have no choice but to lower rates.
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This is going to play out over decades. It's not like we will wake up one day and find autonomous cars everywhere. The first vehicles will be hybrids - not always or fully autonomous. The liability for these cars MIGHT be different, but at first there won't be many of them. Insurance companies might not notice for a while.
Over the years, there likely will be a big transition but the insurance companies, the DMVs and 16 year old boys will have some time to get over the twilight of the American Dream.
Why would premiums drop? (Score:5, Insightful)
"but premiums will necessarily drop as well"
What evidence is there for this statement? Insurance companies are not known for lowering rates. My rates continue to go up even as the value of my vehicles diminishes and I have 0 accidents, 0 claims and 0 tickets on my record.
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Re:Why would premiums drop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Insurance auto and home are funny industries. While most business try to retain long time customers and treat them well the insurance industry does the opposite.
The logic is apparently chaining insurers is something people find a pain in the ass. Being a long time customer does not add to your value as far they are concerned. No they are so efficient at paper work the overhead of on-boarding etc from customer churn is so low they don't care. They figure you having been on the rolls for awhile means you won't bother to switch and they can keep over charging you.
Just changing carriers every four years or so will frequently get you better rates.
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Statistically (you know, how insurance actually works) a driver gets in an accident every 6 years. You are due for one.
You win ironic post of the day.
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Have you considered, maybe, shopping around to your agent's competitors?
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I actually can't shop around. I live in a rural mountain area that had a nearby forest fire a few years ago and there is only one insurance company that will insure houses here. The homeowners insurance rates are so ludicrously high that the token percentage they drop it by bundling auto insurance means that no one could compete with the rate. Every year they raise the rates (20% increase this year) because, "Fuck you. You are legally obligated to pay us money so, pay us more".
And, to preemptively answe
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There is not much incentive to reduce premiums on something people are legally required to maintain. They can simply say they have to charge a lot because the risk profile is not yet known. I don't know what analysts are there that are predicting the effect on auto insurers when there isn't yet a single autonomous vehicle available to the public. I think people are vastly overestimating the adoption rate of this technology. The insurance certainly won't be any cheaper so long as it remains a niche market wi
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But what there is plenty of is resistance by regulators to those same companies trying to increase their rates just because they can. It's not legally mandated without significant regulation.
niche market with many unknowns.
Insurance is one of the most studied and detailed fields out there. Because if the companies plan it wrong they owe a lot of money...
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It will just transition to general liability insurance being mandatory, so your homeowner's policy goes up a bit and Renter's insurance becoming mandatory. It is just liability insurance that is mandatory, damage to your own car would still need to be covered if you haven't paid off the car, and frankly that is where companies provide value-- making it easier to get damage fixed.
Because someone will do it (Score:2)
Either states will decide you don't need insurance if you have a self driving car, or a company will spring up that will insure self driving cars for a lot less money.
It is one area where capitalism can work. Lets say all the existing insurance underwriters charge $100/month for normal insurance based on human drivers. At that rate they can cover the rate of claims and make a nice profit. Say $20/month ends up being net profit after their operations costs and payout are factored in, and operations are anoth
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Mandated insurance makes no sense. It's not sufficient to cover anything but the most trivial accident. Compared to the costs and risks involved it's a completely token gesture.
Re:Why would premiums drop? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is plenty of evidence to contradict TFA's claim, but like you point out I see no evidence premiums will or would drop. Insurance companies are about making money. If they can charge the rate, they will charge the rate. If you want to fix insurance, go back to Insurance companies being Non-Profit organizations.
You make it sound like insurance companies operate in a vacuum. If an autonomous car is safer and rates don't go down then someone new will come along and undercut the existing players. More importantly, if liability gets shifted to the car manufacturers then if rates are not what they consider reasonable then it's very possible for them to just self-insure their entire fleet and cut out the insurance companies completely.
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That's now how statistics work. And being insurance companies, they know statistics.
One of the few times that reasoning DOES work is with earthquakes, but for entirely different reasons.
Ha, lower rates lol (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ok, so this is Traffic deaths as a fraction of total population. We are currently down to less than half of the maximal values that were from the 30s through the 70s. We are back down to 1920 levels of traffic deaths as a fraction of total population.
Has this dramatic decline since 1980 sent these companies out of business?
Re:Ha, lower rates lol (Score:5, Informative)
One of the major reasons traffic deaths went down is we redesigned cars so that instead of being able to withstand a crash without injury to the car, they absorb the crash in a 'crush zone', meaning the car itself takes the damage instead of a person.
In addition, the value of cars has risen over that time, as we put in a lot more features on them. So damages went up
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Agreed, we should get rid of crumple zones and go back to rolling battering ram frames. Funerals are way cheaper than auto repairs.
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One of the major reasons traffic deaths went down is we redesigned cars so that instead of being able to withstand a crash without injury to the car, they absorb the crash in a 'crush zone', meaning the car itself takes the damage instead of a person.
And this made a lot of lesser crashes that wouldn't have injured the passengers anyway far more expensive because even small damage is distributed on a large area. I was in an accident not so long ago and despite being a fairly low speed collision where the air bag did not deploy, the damage to my car alone amounted to about 1/5th of the sticker price for a new one and in total I think it wiped out everything I've paid in insurance premiums over the last ten years. So I got no reason to complain, really...
Winter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ain't nothing going to happen with autonomous vehicles until they solve the rain and snow problem. Maybe California doesn't have to worry about vehicles in precipitation, but the rest of the nation does.
I see this complaint every time an autonomous car story comes up. Is there actual evidence somewhere that rain and snow have any significant impact on the vehicles' ability to perceive an environment or on their ability to navigate it? The sensor fusion algorithms already deal with noise exclusion and transitory sensing failures. I can believe heavy snow which obscures the lane markings would be an issue, but even then that doesn't really prevent collision avoidance, or even safe driving ability so long
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Do a search for google car can't drive in rain and you will see that they haven't even been tested in heavy rain because of safety concerns.
That just means they haven't gotten to that yet, not that they expect it to be very hard.
If it wasn't an issue they would already be doing it. Of course it is nowhere near the first of the issues autonomous cars have, they are quite far from what people imagine.
The guys I know working on the Google cars disagree. Oh, they have plenty to do, but it's mostly because they've set an extraordinarily high bar for themselves.
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There are enough people living in the southern part of the US for there to be enough of a market for autonomous vehicles, and that's especially true because I'd bet retired people will be a very large market. They're not going to wait until these cars can safely drive in Alaska before people in California, Arizona, and Florida start buying them.
Besides, the first generation of autonomous cars will look and behave like *any other car* when driven manually. In poor weather (anything beyond light snow or mod
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They could just give the autonomous cars very large umbrellas
Would you trust a computer to operate an umbrella?
No (Score:2)
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Luxury car market (Score:2)
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A lot of luxury cars really aren't that high-performance. They might have bigger engines sometimes, but they also usually weigh more so it doesn't make them much faster than a Camry. What you're getting for your money is the brand cachet, more features, nicer amenities, and a higher quality interior. The interior is probably the most noticeable difference; go sit in a $60,000 Mercedes and then compare it to some $20k regular car. There's all kinds of corners cut in the cheaper cars; crappier materials,
Great News (Score:5, Funny)
"that's great news for the 30,000+ people who die in traffic accidents every year in the U.S."
Great News? Dude, they are DEAD!
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"that's great news for the 30,000+ people who die in traffic accidents every year in the U.S."
Great News? Dude, they are DEAD!
Besides, if I were one of them, I wouldn't consider this great news. "Oh, gee, so there's now a technology that could have prevented my death... but I'm still dead." That would just annoy me. (Well, I'm sure being dead is be annoying already, but this would annoy me even more.)
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Expressed more rigorously: "that's great news for the people who run the risk of being among the 30,000+ people who die in traffic accidents every year in the U.S."
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Expressed more rigorously
I see what you did there.
Not insurance, but lawyers (Score:5, Interesting)
Her industry may not exist in 20 years.
In fact, all traffic based lawsuits may vanish as people find it makes more sense to move to a no-fault insurance system when most cars are driven by computer.
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>> ...lawyer...defending...drunks...Her industry may not exist in 20 years.
I have a feeling that attorneys will be able to legislate this threat away long before it reaches them.
Labor will decrease, not profit (Score:2)
The smaller amount of claims will result in fewer payouts, and also fewer employees needed for claims administration. But this is just a decrease in costs which will (presumably) be passed on to the consumer through cheaper premiums. The reduction in costs should exactly match the reduction in premiums, so profits should remain stable. A reduced number of claims should not have an effect on profits in the long term as long as the number of drivers stays constant. TFA guesses that the number of drivers may d
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Don't forget car insurance is only one type of insurance. Life insurance, health insurance, homeowner's insurance, renter's insurance, insurance for boats and other toys, liability, worker's comp, etc. The list is huge. Cars may be a big subsection of the pie, but they're still just one branch.
Hedge funds by another name (Score:4, Insightful)
Insurance companies don't really make money from 'betting' against you having an accident. They make money from the fact that they end up holding huge accounts full of accumulated premiums which they then use to play in the global financial markets. There are still plenty of things that need insurance, so the industry won't exactly disappear, but I'm sure any displaced insurance industry workers will quickly find another way to play the global slot machines with your savings.
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It's Even Worse for Insurance Companies... (Score:5, Insightful)
With automated cars, taxis will become much less expensive meaning that fewer people will buy cars so fewer people will need insurance. 20 years from now things are going to be VERY different...
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We'll have JohnnyCabs.
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The title is terrible (Score:4, Insightful)
The napster situation and the driverless cars are not analogous.
As to falling revenue... the mistake here is conflating the fees with "Profit"... that's revenue.
Technically I can make more money selling you something for 1 dollar as a percentage of expenditure than I can for something I sell for a million dollars.
Companies that sell seemingly cheap shit are often very profitable. Why? Because it easier to over bill someone for something really cheap then it is to over bill them for something really expensive.
If I sell you a candy for a dollar and it costs me 10 cents to make that candy then I'm making 90 cents profit on every dollar of revenue. Could I do that if I were selling you something for a million dollars? Much less likely. This is why for high ticket items the profit margins tend to shrink.
On the point of insurance, the profit is the revenue they take in minus the cost of paying out claims. Now they increase the fees based on two things.
1. What they estimate their claims are going to be.
2. What they think you're willing to pay which relates to what your competitors are offering, market conditions, etc.
Now if the autonomous cars crash less that means the estimated claims are going to go down. And that means costs go down. And that means that due to competition, your competitors are going to lower fees for that insurance because they can get a competitive advantage by doing that. This forces you to lower your own fees until the set price hovers somewhere above costs based on market conditions.
Now for a business to be profitable it has to make a certain percentage profit on capital expenditure. Otherwise your business doesn't make sense. Even making a tiny profit doesn't make sense because there are more profitable things to do with the same amount of capital and you'd be better off closing your business down and doing that other thing instead.
So you need a certain percentage profit. And that means since its on a percentage basis that reducing revenue doesn't actually mean you lose profitability so long as the percentage holds.
Lets say the insurance business goes from collecting 100 billion in fees to 50 billion. Okay... but if the percentage of the fee that goes to profits remains the same then the business while smaller will remain as profitable as ever.
You can't say the same for the music business. What has killed them is that the percentage profits has collapsed ALONG with the revenue. Both collapsed at once. AND the whole thing poses an existential threat to the record industry itself.
That would be a napster moment.
What is more, if anything, I could expect percentage profits to go UP as revenue declines due to cheaper policies in auto insurance. That is, I believe people will get less price conscious as the absolute fees go down. So lets say it costs me 20 dollars per person to offer this insurance to you. Could I get away with charging your 30 dollars for the policy? I could do that much more easily than if the costs were 200 dollars and I wanted to charge you 300 dollars for the policy.
See?
If anything insurance should get more profitable as costs go down. The actual percentage profits of high ticket businesses is often anemic. I've seen lots of businesses get by year after year on 2 to 5 percent profit margins and that is a TOUGH business.
Just think about that... servicing customer after customer and making 5 cents for every 95 cents you spend servicing them. But that's not uncommon.
Ideally where you want to be as a business is having as high a profit margin as you can possibly get your greedy fingers on.
50 percent... 100 percent... 500 percent. You want big fat margins. Even a little renvenue at those margins is gold because it gives you lots of wiggle room to absorb unexpected losses or shifts in market conditions.
If you're making 2 percent per transaction and things change... you could easily be LOSING 20 percent per transaction. *snaps fingers* in a heart beat.
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The car insurance industry is making a lot of money on the fact that your driving profile is individual and will trick you into keep paying a high premium despite having moved into a lower risk segment. All autonomous cars of the same model will drive the same way, which makes it a lot harder to price gouge. It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 80, male or female, single driver or whatever. It's one Google car, 10000 miles/year, parked in garage - what are you charging? In fact, Google might easily just offer
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... and I question the premise
And I would agree with that. As you point out, the situation is not analogous. My own thought is the OP is kind of getting ahead of him/herself. For autonomous cars to make an impact on insurance rates, you would have to have a significant portion of the vehicles be autonomous. Frankly, I can't see that happening for many years, as only a small portion of drivers can afford to go out and buy a brand new car. For buyers of used cars, it will be a long time before they can get their hands on an autonomo
Maybe they won't screw us (Score:3)
Maybe they won't pay an army of lobbyists to bribe the shit out of the government so they can perpetuate an obsolete business model and charge people up the ass for services that are no longer needed. Nah just kidding, let's watch them pocket the extra money like they earned it and screw the customer even harder.
Does not follow (Score:2)
Insurance is but one upended industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Auto repair shops
Gas stations
Auto parts stores
Taxis and Limos
Motor sports
Motor vehicle related advertising
None of these survive as they exist today. There's probably a dozen more.
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Auto manufacturers
Someone still needs to make the autonomous cars. Even if they can't differentiate models based on acceleration and things, creature comforts and cargo space will ensure that tiered models remain.
Auto repair shops
These guys are probably the ones likely to be hurt the most. A handful will survive, since tires, brakes, and oil still need fixing; general wear will always be a thing. However, the numbers will certainly diminish, as accident-based work becomes less common.
Gas stations
...these cars run on wishing dust now? Unless you've got a
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Somehow people think autonomous cars will only leak pixie dust, and that people will happily throw away their drivers license and just take Johny Cabs everywhere.
are you kidding? (Score:2)
Are people going to stop dying unexpectedly from {insert reason that doesn't involve a car}? Is theft or destruction of personal property going to end? No...This is a big product category for the insurance industry, yes, but it's still a gigantic industry.
Adapt into "auto clubs" (Score:2)
If companies that provide auto insurance are smart and see the writing on the wall (I have to assume so, since they are entirely about risk/benefit analysis), they will gradually transform into a different kind of entity. While they'll still provide insurance, they'll turn into a "subscription" version of a car rental company: Customers with the proper plan can request a self-driving car for certain periods, and may even receive a discount for doing so over using their traditional vehicle.
As autonomous car
PRESS RELEASE ALERT! (Score:2)
Are you shitting me? Most of us were looking forward to the advent of flying cars, too.
Earlier this week...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru... [pbs.org]
And who do they think is going to be purchasing all these "autonomous vehicles" and with all the twenty-somethings and millennials moving back home with their parents, how do they think they're going to afford them?
Look, I don't mind advertisements on Slashdot, but goddamn, please stop with the press
How much does advertising cost? (Score:2)
Let's not get ahead of ourselves... (Score:2)
First off, most of us really aren't waiting for autonomous cars. Just saying it to grab headlines doesn't make it true. I bike mostly and enjoy driving when I do. I get motion sick when someone else is driving. I could care less about a driverless car.
Second, there's no evidence _at all_ that driverless cars will lead to fewer deaths. It's just pure speculation at this point based on the notion that computers will reduce the number of errors that lead to deaths. There's also just as good a chance that drive
Insurance is not like music (Score:2)
Music by specific artists is a unique product -- another artist generally can't reproduce the same music in exactly the same way.
Insurance is the opposite. All auto insurance is essentially the same -- the differences have very little value. If one insurance company fails to update it's business model, 5 more insurance companies will swoop in and take the business.
Yeah, right (Score:2)
Insurance will suddenly drop to $5. Then how are the insurance companies supposed to pay out when someone uses a media player exploit to make all Google cars that were declared unsupported before they received Android Zebra crash into a bus full of nuns?
Half Life (Score:2)
Cars have about a 12 year half life. The composition of the cars on the road will be subject to that. So even if 100% of the cars being made suddenly were autonomous it would be a long time before most of the cars on the road were autonomous. The insurance industry will have a lot longer to see the changes coming than implied here.
The long life of cars is such that I can't imagine the security mess that will come with owning a 10-20 year old autonomous car. People gripe now about XP not getting security
Not sure it will happen, so why worry (Score:2)
If the following premise is true, and I think it is, fully autonomous will not happen. My premise is that everything is hackable. If true, then I am not planning on riding in a vehicle which I am not controlling and would not support them in the wild. The one thing that helps prevent accidents is "skin in the game". IE, if I crash into you then I get hurt too. A hacker has no such worry. He/she can cause you to crash into another car and the hacker is not at risk. As all autonomous cars are going to be on t
Most of us are looking forward to the advent of au (Score:2)
Most of us are looking forward to the advent of autonomous vehicles.
When you say "most of us", I assume you mean most of the people hanging out with you... and you are by yourself. Because I literally don't know anybody that is looking forward to this.
Re: (Score:2)
Then of course there's MADD. I assure you that more than one of the neoprohibitionist protofascists behind that organization is crosseyed with rage at the idea of cars that can safely take people home even if they've committed the mortal sin of alcohol consumption. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some MADD type had gotten so angry that she kicked her little yapping lap dog right through the living room picture window at the mere thought of an autonomous vehicle.
http://www.madd.org/blog/2014/... [madd.org]
"MADD is excited about the possibilities of self-driving vehicles. We support the development of advanced technology that will reduce crashes, fatalities and injuries on our roadways. Both the self-driving technology and the DADSS (Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety) technology, which automatically detects a driver’s blood alcohol concentration, hold tremendous promise for a safer tomorrow. We look forward to future advancements that will eventually elimin
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Then of course there's MADD. I assure you that more than one of the neoprohibitionist protofascists behind that organization is crosseyed with rage at the idea of cars that can safely take people home even if they've committed the mortal sin of alcohol consumption. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some MADD type had gotten so angry that she kicked her little yapping lap dog right through the living room picture window at the mere thought of an autonomous vehicle.
You must be that one guy who doesn't know anybody that has been killed by a drunk driver. Most of us know at least one, if not two or three. I assure you MADD is against drunk driving and not against drinking. I am not a member of their organization, but I think I hate drunk driver's just as much as they do, and drunk drivers deserve every bit of hatred toward them and more.
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I've driven in Boston and Seattle. Give me Seattle any day. Or San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or even Atlanta.
Boston has bad driving of the sort I've only seen elsewhere in silly YouTube videos of the "Look how crazy they drive in $thirdWorldCountry, how are any of them still alive?" sort.
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They can't be worse than the drivers in Phoenix.
I bet you don't have to worry much about being shot at in Seattle traffic. In Phoenix, you do.
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Enough with this shit. The "gold standard" Google cars aren't even close to being able to drive themselves autonomously today. WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP THINKING THIS IS ACTUALLY GOING TO HAPPEN???
I would venture to bet things like lane guidance and the ability to drive a straight line on a limited access highway will be required by 2035, but if anyone thinks cars are just going to magically drive themselves everywhere in 20 years, they're out of their goddamned minds.
And I'll still be driving my manually dr
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Feeling a little insecure are we?
Grandfather clause (Score:2)
In practice, it'll parallel the introduction of seat belts, anti-lock brakes, and air bags: either old cars will be grandfathered or aftermarket retrofits will be made available.
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>> I can go to the bar by myself and get hammered, and not worry about driving home.
And yet people on SlashDot wonder why many of us would still want our OWN cars in the age of automated driving.
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I can go to the bar by myself and get hammered, and not worry about driving home. However I don't think this will happen in my lifetime, regardless of all the Slashdot submissions we've seen lately.
Not if you keep drinking like that, it won't.
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Why did I spend all my mod points yesterday? This is the whole truth, right here.
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If you don't have many pleasures in life then I suppose that driving may be one of them. Driving through the Italian alps in an R8 Coupe can be a pleasure, but for most people driving is usually a tedious chore.
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Driver Tourism. Pick a nice road in the Italian Alps. Run it one way with minimum times between drivers. Charge a small fortune. Options could include having professional drivers who will drive you etc etc.
If you really think driving is fun then look for ways to pursue it safely. Sufficient money will make it happen.