• nucleative@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Wonder how this works with car insurance. Os there a future where the driver doesn’t need to be insured? Can the vehicle software still be “at fault” and how will the actuaries deal with assessing this new risk.

    • machinin@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I believe Mercedes takes responsibility if there is an accident while driving autonomously.

      • Rinox@feddit.it
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        7 months ago

        Will it pull a Tesla and switch off the autopilot seconds before an accident?

          • T156@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            If memory serves, that’s not an intentional feature, but more a coincidence, since if the driver thinks the cruise control is about to crash the car, they’ll pop the brakes. Touching the brakes disengages the cruise control by design, so you end up with it shutting down before a crash happens.

            • nucleative@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              That makes perfect sense. If the driver looks up to notice that he’s in a dangerous, unfixable situation, slams the breaks, disconnecting the autopilot (which have been responaible for letting the situation develop) hopefully the automaker can’t entirely say “not our fault, the system wasn’t even engaged at the time of the collision”

      • Sizzler@slrpnk.net
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        7 months ago

        And this is how they will push everyone into driverless. Through insurance costs. Who would insure 1 human driver vs 100 bots, (once the systems have a few billion miles on them)

        • nucleative@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          You’re probably right. Another decade or two and human driver controlled cars might be prohibitively expensive to insure for some or even not allowed in certain areas.

          I can imagine an awesome world where that’s a great thing but also imagine a dystopian world like wall-e as well. I guess we’ll know then which one we chose.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico the car insurance company. In one of his annual letters Buffett said that autonomous cars are going to be great for humanity and bad for insurance companies.

      “If [self-driving cars] prove successful and reduce accidents dramatically, it will be very good for society and very bad for auto insurers.”

      Actuaries are by definition bad at assessing new risk. But as data get collected they quickly adjust to it. There are a lot of cars so if driverless cars become even a few percent of cars on the road they will quickly be able to build good actuarial tables.