2mo ago

Insurer Study: Waymo is 12.5 Times Safer Than Human Drivers - FuelArc News

The data coming out from an independent study of Waymo autonomous vehicles is, frankly, amazing. Swiss Re, one of the largest global insurance firms based out of Zürich, reports that 25.3 million fully autonomous miles drive by Waymo vehicles resulted in a 92% reduction in car crash injuries.

In plain English, Waymo self-driving tech is 12.5x safer than human drivers.

Let's dig into what that means!

48 comments

In the end, insurers will be the harbingers of autonomous vehicles.
In 2050, the insurance will be twice as high if you insist on having a steering wheel, and it will have a major impact on buying decisions.
- Never trust an automated vehicle you have to buy insurance for. If it's truly autonomous, then the actual person in the driver seat is irrelevant. There is no need to price risk individually. Any true self driving car should have a lifetime insurance policy included in the purchase price. The manufacturer is the one determining if crashes will occur. The liability should be entirely on them. Any company selling you a "self driving" card that still requires you to buy insurance is selling snake oil.
  
  I agree with you, but it will never happen without legislation forcing it. The insurance companies don't care who the money comes from (for the most part), so take them out of the equation. The person purchasing the car will (rightfully) feel that they shouldn't have liability because they're not driving the car, but the manufacturer/dealer will also (rightfully) feel that they can't control the environment that the owner subjects the car to, so the liability should be on the purchaser.
  Right now, if you don't maintain your tires, and you lose traction and cause a wreck, you're at fault. If you don't maintain your brakes and they fail and you slam into the back of another car, you're at fault. Repeat ad nauseam for every part of the car.
  Unless everything becomes leased (oh god, I can hear the comments about 'you will own nothing, and you will be happy' coming) and the manufacturer/dealer can force inspection of the car every x00 miles at the purchaser's expense, they will happily (and successfully, because they'll definitely sway the majority of american idiots with their 'dire warnings' about giving up ownership of your vehicle) that they shouldn't be liable because they can't ensure owners don't set up a dangerous situation.
  I also don't see them 'grounding' a vehicle because a sensor says something is wrong. That is just screaming as the bad PR looms for the companies that would spearhead that thrust.
  
  Your comment needs more paragraph-long sentences with multiple parentheticals. I can almost read it. /s
  Actually, if you take out the parentheticals, your third paragraph doesn't even make sense.
  they will happily that they shouldn't be liable...
  Happily argue?
  If you can't keep track of your own sentences enough to not miss an important word, how can you expect other people to do so? Maybe ease up on the parentheses.
  
  Sory.
  Edit: Sorry
  
  Mm. No. Where / how much you drive it has everything to do with the amount of risk and is completely personal.
  
  Well, self-driving cars should refuse to drive in conditions that are outside the safety parameters they are designed for, regardless of exposure (time, amount, and condition driven), so the result should be the same.
  Even standard warranty doesn't define conditions that strictly, just time & mileage - and even that bcs of the wear.
  
  No dude. If you live in a high crime city your insurance is going to cost more than if you live in an affluent gated community. Because the risk of theft or vandalism or damage is just greater. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, it’s just a fact. But maybe facts don’t belong in this fantasy session about how we all wished insurance worked.
  
  Sorry, was this a reply to my post?
  \ I got a bit lost.
  Also, in the first and second world countries we don't have crime-area based pricing tables, only like natural disasters, but I've never heard about it applied to car insurance (tho it's def possible, but they wound need to be less detailed).
  
  Yes it was a reply to you. I’m saying that all of these ideas about how “self driving cars take the human driver out of the picture, therefore everyone’s insurance should be the same” ignore the fact that the safety record of the human driver is only one of the risk factors that determines your car insurance cost. The other risk factors are unaffected by whether your car drives itself.
  
  That depends on the market conventions I think.
  From a few European countries that I vaguely know about car insurance pricing it just depends on drivers age and/or that persons past claim events.
  But anyway, I wasn't commenting on the contrary, just that a self-driving car (like that combo of hardware and software versions) should behave comparably in regards to the safety it can control.
  Eg that a user couldn't make a self-driving car drive in unsafe conditions.
  
  Watch these Tesla's eat shit in "Full" Self-Driving mode because there's fog, it's sort of darkly hilarious that human needed to intervene to avoid hitting a fucking freight train:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4f-crzpZ9w
- This comment section is surprising me with both thoughtful and dark observations about the article. Well, that's rad! I was expecting a more "good news" crowd on the Uplifting News board, but if y'all want Dark Futurism, I can hang.
  You're 100% correct. Non ADAS vehicles will be a luxury good. There will probably be social pressures, similar to seatbelt adoption, pressuring folks to not drive themselves. 2050 feels like a reasonable time horizon for that to start.
- As it should. Nothing hurts your freedom more than an untimely death. And cars kill a LOT of people.
- Sure, insurers balance portfolio & premiums, however most insurance products (and most insurance coverages) are designed (developed) to be profitable on their own.
  So, insurance companies benefit vastly from higher premiums, not lower ones (short of something being uninsurable ofc).
  \ (Eg healthcare in USA - insurers want higher prices too & are incentivized to make that happen.)
  Also depends what specifically WayOfTheMoo even insures. Maybe it's just car liability insurance and not every scratch & ding comprehensive coverage. Or maybe SwissRe reinsures only damages over a certain amount or only (over) when total insurers claims sum up to a certain amount (reinsurance contracts can vary vastly ... tho on the other hand they also like to collect all raw data from insurers to nerd over extra numbers).

48 comments