FAA Allows AIG To Use Drones For Insurance Inspections 53
An anonymous reader writes with news that AIG is the latest insurance company given permission by the FAA to use drones for inspections. "The Federal Aviation Administration has been rather stingy when it comes to giving companies the OK to test, let alone employ, drones. After getting permission this week, AIG joins State Farm and USAA as insurance providers with exemptions that allow them to use the UAVs to perform tasks that are risky to regular folks — things like roof inspections after a major storm. In addition to keeping its inspectors safe, the company says drones will speed up the claims process, which means its customers will, in theory, get paid faster. 'UAVs can help accelerate surveys of disaster areas with high resolution images for faster claims handling, risk assessment, and payments,' the news release explains. 'They can also quickly and safely reach areas that could be dangerous or inaccessible for manual inspection, and they provide richer information about properties, structures, and claim events.'"
Seems reasonable (Score:2)
At first blush, this exemption seems reasonable. I can see how insurance companies can make use of drones in their business to speed up work and to improve safety.
I haven't thought of ways this can be abused and what not. Any reasons why this would be a bad idea?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
1) The insurance company or possibly the individual operator in case of gross negligence.
2) It is part of a claim. If denied it can be contested and this is evidence just like the adjustor walking around and saying what he was is evidence at whatever arbitration hearing.
3) The inspector is going to be there running the drone. They can go inside and look at the water stained ceiling. This is so they don't have to risk their life walking around on a potentially unstable roof. Seriously, ladders and falls
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This is a good thing. You call someone to look at your roof and they can use a machine to do it instead of risking their life.
Not to mention: using a drone, they're using contactless observation. If an inspector damages your property while inspecting, that costs everyone. A drone shouldn't be causing property damage.
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Neither should a competent contractor or adjuster.
This is something that seems deceptively useful but I suspect that it will be less effective than everyone thinks. Plus someone still has to operate it and do so competently to at least succeed in doing a poor job at it.
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I wonder what restrictions the FAA put on these insurance companies ... like what sort of training do their pilots require?
I imagine they didn't just leave it up to the insurance company, but probably mandated a certain level of training. I know there was talk of requiring a full pilot's license, perhaps a commercial one, for such things.
I don't know if an FAA unmanned aircraft endorsement exists, or they might require a rotorcraft (helicopter) endorsement for your typical quadcopter. Not that all manned
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Also, these guys are following the "line of sight" rule -- the pilot is in visual contact with the drone at all times. This means that there's no ambiguity as to who's at fault should something go wrong.
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Because if said drone falls and hits someone, who has to pay? The insurance company (who will simply pass it onto customers by raising rates) or the home owner whose house was being inspected (AIG: "The accident wouldn't have happened if John Smith didn't file a claim in the first place")?
The same can be said for an agent driving a company car or doing anything else while working on the clock. I'm not sure how a drone would be handled differently than anything else the agents of the company do.
2. Do customers have a right to view/context said drone footage? People don't exactly record everything they do in a post-disaster situation so if the insurance company claims, "we saw you with a chainsaw, how do we know you didn't do the damage yourself?" and you can't remember the what's and why's, you're screwed.
That's a legit concern. Finding new ways of denying coverage is probably a high priority to some people in the industry.
On the other hand, having more picture and video footage will legitimately help them reduce fraud.
Where will the equilibrium point end up? Hard to say. But this is a legitimate point.
3. How much information can they get with those drones? For obvious damage, yeah, drones are great. But for more subtle damage, like water damage, you NEED a human inspector there. (If the roof has enough water damage, it may not be legally habitable.)
I don't think they're planning on just flying a drone over to your house for a routine damage inspection in place of a human being. I think it's more along the line of an agent keeping a drone in the back of the car so they can fly it around and inspect your roof without having to climb up a ladder. Or perhaps fly around an area where storm/flooding damage has made the specific area unsafe (i.e. collapsed house, washed out bridge with a flooded stream, etc.).
But yeah, perhaps they will just zip a drone around and offer you a minimal payment rather than doing real inspection work. I could see some companies trying to pull that.
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Actual former insurance adjuster here - automobile property damage claims. I would think a drone would be sufficient for initial appraisals.
Here's how it works for auto claims - an appraiser makes a fairly cursory initial inspection of VISIBLE damage. They don't (usually) pop the hood, they don't (usually) lift the car up. They walk around the car wherever it is parked, note down what they see, and do an initial estimate.
Now, maybe four times out of five, when the actual repair work is done, additional d
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They don't need a drone to do that.
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And reducing fraud is a bad thing.... why?
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Because the ease of using drones allows them to spy on and harass everyone, including those with valid claims, those who live in the same house / nearby but aren't involved in the claim, etc.
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They already do that having investigators following you around. Drones won't change that.
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Drones make it more ubiquitous, more automated, more invasive, and allow for more collateral targets.
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But *not* working....
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And reducing fraud is a bad thing.... why?
Because it's not always fraud.
There are a lot of people who really are disabled but who are periodically able to do more serious activities despite the disability, or who try to get better by doing such activities. When an insurance company or benefits arm of the government sees that, they often try to take benefits away. It creates perverse incentives to not try to get better, and it results in disabled people being hurt because they're trying to get better.
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Because it's not always fraud.
Not always. But sometimes. Proof matters.
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Because it's not always fraud.
Not always. But sometimes. Proof matters.
Proof matters if you're dealing with an impartial evaluation that understands more about a person's life than one photograph. If you are perceptive and spend several days with a person in their ordinary life, for example, you understand a lot more than any jury or claims evaluator ever will.
There are people on disability who shouldn't be.
I know people who are on one kind of disability or another who absolutely could do certain kinds of jobs and should, but any clinical evaluation is going to say they're un
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Both quality and quantity of proof matter.
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...or people that just think they are better and end up regretting their actions the next morning.
American workers are constantly encouraged to push themselves past sensible physical limits and to ignore genuine health and safety concerns.
Ya, pretty good idea overall (Score:2)
In general things involving roof inspection are well suited to be done by drone. While there still are times you'd need to put a person on the roof, a drone with a high rez camera can get you the information you need in most cases. Safer, and also faster.
If they weren't so expensive I'd love to have one for my own use for that purpose. I live in a second story condo and access to the roof is a problem (you need a really big ladder). I'd love to be able to fly a drone up to check for debris occluding vents,
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If they weren't so expensive I'd love to have one for my own use for that purpose.
DJI just announced, and will shortly be shipping v3 of their very popular Phantom platform. There are going to be a LOT of people itchy to move to that unit for one reason or another. You should be able to get hold of a gently used v2 for very little by this summer. Cheapie cheap cheap.
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For this use I'd need one with realtime video capability since it would be non-line of sight operation. Hence more cost. Since it is mostly just me wanting to check on things, not worth it.
If there is an actual problem, I have professionals look at it.
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Equipping these with spread-spectrum cameras would also be great -- check for leaks/weak spots by checking the infra-red, etc.
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The FAA doesn't really concern itself with "privacy", which is the primary problem that people have with these so called "drones" -- the FAA's concern is "safety".
And yet they also know that perfect safety is a pipe dream, and so they try to find a balance between safety and utility, and if they err, they try to err on the side of safety. And in the case of unmanned aircraft, they have erred *massively* on the side of safety so far.
The safety concerns of this are very small, and so there's really no reason
FAA - Too old and slow (Score:1)
The FAA is so old and slow, it is literally costing the US money. There are millions of legitimate uses of drones that should require no regulation at all. Not flying it over a group of people or your neighbors house, and keeping under about 200 feet AGL, go for it.
They have also destroyed small aircraft aviation and made them unsafe by creating such heavy regulations that not even Cessna could afford to bring a modern safe aircraft to market. Sport planes are booming if you have $150k, but only because th
Speed up (Score:2)
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Which would then speed up the appeal process. A lack of decision is the same as a denial of coverage. In both cases the policy holder gets no money.
But of course! (Score:1)
AIG and Goldman Sachs will get anything they want from the government. I mean, what the hell, they own it!
Noise (Score:1)
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Just wait until I finish my quad pulse jet!
Not a problem (Score:2)