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from the don't-tell-them-about-motorcycles dept.
Like record companies at the dawn of online music file sharing, Allstate, Geico, State Farm, and others are grappling with innovations that could put a huge dent in their revenue. As carmakers automate more aspects of driving, accidents will likely plunge and car owners will need less coverage. Premiums consumers pay could drop as much as 60 percent in 15 years as self-driving cars hit the roads, says Donald Light, head of the North America property and casualty practice for Celent, a research firm. His message for insurers: "You have to be prepared to see that part of your business shrink, probably considerably."
Auto insurance has long been a lucrative business. The industry collected about $195 billion in premiums last year from U.S. drivers. New customers are the source of so much profit that Geico alone spends more than $1 billion a year on ads to pitch its policies with a talking lizard and other characters. Yet even Warren Buffett, whose company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns Geico, is talking about the long-term risks to the business model. "If you could come up with anything involved in driving that cut accidents by 30 percent, 40 percent, 50 percent, that would be wonderful," he said at a conference in March. "But we would not be holding a party at our insurance company."
The loss of revenue for the insurance industry gives me a sad.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday July 31 2015, @06:08PM
To the extent that automated cars will drive differently than humans, they will be more predictable with fewer outliers.
I don't think that's a safe assumption, especially when you factor in that robotic reaction time is different from human reaction time. That alone will deviate the behaviour enough to require extra rounds of testing. It'll likely mean more software updates during the life of each car as well.
Other automated cars will present zero challenge and zero surprise.
I hope you end up being correct, but I've heard similar arguments against sanitizing inputs on web-facing code.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by timbojones on Friday July 31 2015, @07:15PM
True, but irrelevant. The car is still a car with a car's momentum and maneuverability. An automated driver needs to respond to a car swerving regardless of whether the human driver is reacting to something that happened a second ago, or another automated driver is reacting to something that happened a tenth of a second ago, or the car itself blew a tire just now.