Driverless Cars and the Future Of Car Insurance

By Ben Glass, Esquire

Benjamin W. Glass and Associates

. https://www.benglasslaw.com/

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Driverless Cars and the Future Of Car Insurance

Car insurance is a stable industry. Innovation is slow and fairly unremarkable. This has been, and for some time will continue to be, the narrative of the industry. With that said, we are slowly moving towards the precipice of major changes in car insurance and car accidents.

Cars will eventually be entirely driverless, which is great for productivity. Imagine being able to eat, sleep or work in place of driving, driving, or driving. Sure, we might share a touch of nostalgia, but, ultimately, convenience and safety will trump our nostalgia for driving a car. While many disagree on how quickly these seismic shifts will occur, very few disagree that it will indeed occur. Many, however, fail to recognize what the downstream effects of algorithms piloting cars are.

Over time, these algorithms will become massive improvements over the average driver. In spite of this, accidents will still happen. So let's say you were in a car that slipped on an icy road and spun into oncoming traffic causing a three-car pileup. Who is at fault? You're not after all, you weren't driving. It's possible that the algorithm failed to recognize the icy road, so the car you were in didn't slow down enough, thus, causing an accident. Does the car manufacturer who purchased or installed that software bear responsibility? Maybe you were negligent for repeatedly failing to update the software in the car. Maybe the sensors in your car were inadequately inspected, so the software didn't have the correct data. So the repair shop may bear responsibility. It will be interesting to see these issues litigated over the next decades.

Conflicted liability may become a thing of the past. Currently, when a car accident occurs, there is limited information available to examine. This leads to conflicts about who is at fault for a car accident. Many times the only information available is the memories of each driver. Sometimes, head injuries are involved, which complicates even those accounts.

When a big settlement hinges on these facts, it can leave both parties in serious jeopardy. Some cars have increasingly sophisticated software which, when recovered, can provide objective information that can verify or undermine the account of one or more parties about what happened in an accident. In the far-flung future, we may have close to perfect information about what unfolded in a car accident and no longer have to be concerned with inaccurate evaluations or judgments about what happened.

Car insurers will have to grapple with fewer accidents, but there will be investigations that cost a lot more money. Cars will be far more expensive to repair and more likely to become a total loss when involved in accidents. Software engineers may replace claims adjusters. This is a matter of “only time will tell,” but it's fun to consider the implications. What do you think?