The best part isnt that you would pay the same and less if a bot does it, you will pay the same when bot drives and extra when you do.

> one day my car insurance company will tell me: "you have to pay us more because you are driving yourself"

As it should. You’re objectively higher risk, particularly if you’ve ever been at fault for a crash or gotten a ticket.

You're "objectively" higher risk, based on a study by the company building the autopilot, right?

How objective is that?

Like the Borg, every Waymo is the same driver. So in column A, the insurance company has a meta-driver with many millions of miles of statistics. In column B, we have slow-reaction and non-lidar-equipped you, who had a fender-bender last year and a speeding ticket 3 years ago.

> you, who had a fender-bender last year and a speeding ticket 3 years ago

This is factually wrong: I did not.

I apologize if I gave the impression that I had personal knowledge of your driving record and traffic violations spanning over the last 36 months. I assure you, my intent in using the word "you" was merely to illustrate a general situation in which an individual (though surely not yourself, palata, specifically), will find themselves being penalized for a prior incident. As my comment was surely read by thousands of HN readers, one imagines that as each of them read the word "you", they pondered their own driving history in their lived experience.

Now that we have established the fact that you, palata, did not have a speeding ticket 3 years ago, I would encourage you to think about the application of my statement, to your actual situation. That is, you may substitute the words "speeding ticket 3 years ago" with any traffic violation or insurance claim where you were determined to be at fault, over any time period which might not be 3 years. Then the question is raised of whether you, palata, would incur higher insurance costs than Waymo.

Let me just try to understand your point. Someone says "you are objectively higher risk than an autonomous car, so it's normal that your insurance makes you pay more if you drive".

To which I answer: "how objective is that, when the claim comes from the company selling the autonomous car?"

Then you tell me something that I understand as: "well, you are objectively higher risk because if you look at your record, you have made mistakes that show that your are".

And when I say "actually, I haven't", you patronize me? Is that how it works?

No. I haven't killed more people than autonomous cars have. Before you can prove that over my life as a driver, I will cause more damage than an autonomous car would have, then you don't get to say that I am objectively higher risk and therefore should pay more insurance.

Now you can try to look at studies that try to prove that. And when I ask "how objective is that?" when the study comes from those who benefit from those results, you can stop for a minute and consider that maybe, I am allowed to ask.

That's initially true, but as the car ages, and maintenance is done (or not done, or done improperly) the car's aspects will change.

And as new cars are developed, obviously there are more "drivers". Essentially every year there'll be new drivers for every company that makes autonomous cars, possibly multiple.

Yeah, it's still a lot fewer than the individual humans, but it's definitely not just "one driver".

I'm imagining insurance rates fluctuating with semver...

Column A might have a few kills in their numbers.

Obviously the assumption is that "one day" we have systems that outperform human drivers + reliable data on said systems.

That's ad hominem. The only question is whether the research is correct, and the data is true.

Having said that, with time we will have more independent studies.

They should also ask for more money from sick people when it comes to health insurance, as they’re more prone to getting sick again and again and hence consume resources, after all how many Luigis can there be?

Which is to say that naked capitalism works until it doesn’t, and when it stops working big chances are that it won’t do it gracefully, see how present-day health insurance CEOs are now scared shitless of Big City streets.

If self-driving cars are widely available, and they can drive everywhere a normal car can go, then you're not driving manually because you need to do so, you're driving manually because you like it, and the society isn't there to pay for your hobbies.

> If self-driving cars are widely available

They won't be "widely available" because of the higher prices, just look at the EV market right now. You won't get a self-driving $2,000 clunker, and when you drive a $2,000 clunker you don't do it because you "like it", but because that's all that you can afford.

Ah yes. Technological progress will never happen.

Did it happen for EVs in the here and now? Where can I find a SH EV clunker for $2,000? I'm talking about an EV with performances similar to those of a gasoline-based $2,000 clunker.

Otherwise, believing in "technological progress" as a potential solution is just just that, an irrational belief.

> an irrational belief

You won't walk around with a calculator in your pocket, will you?

"More" is the critical word here. I don't see any reason why insurance premiums should increase. Insurance premiums aren't sin taxes or some governmental incentive, they are offered by private firms.

I would expect premium levels to continue to be driven by liability pool payouts plus a profit margin. Autonomous vehicles don't increase driver risk or liability pool payouts. IF anything, they reduce them due to safer driving conditions for the humans.

Insurance always balances between cost pooling and making people pay for their increased risk. Car insurance has always been more expensive for riskier drivers: young men pay more, driving “high risk” cars pay more.

If the overall liability pool goes down but the human drivers become an outsized part of it, the insurance company will likely shift that cost to them. If they don’t, someone could set up an autonomous-only insurance company (or google could just insure itself) to take advantage of the lower risk, making the human insurance more expensive (even more so that the liability since the overall pool will be much smaller).

Yes, that is implicit in what I am saying. We have human only insurance pools today. I dont see a good reason why a human only insurance pool in the future would be more expensive than today.

Human driving wont be more risky than today.

This would be excellent! I expect it also costs more to insure a hydrogen-powered zeppellin compared to more modern and stable technologies.

Makes sense

That's the dream. As a cyclist I would hope that day comes very soon.

yea I don't particularly trust a for profit corporation to take my safety as a cyclist more than the minimum viable consideration. I used to be really excited about self driving cars until I realized that in US culture, it would basically be used to further prioritize car dependent infrastructure at the expense of proper walkable spaces and alternative transportation.

we could have amazing and SAFE cycling infrastructure NOW if american culture wasn't so objectively trash.

Or even as a pedestrian. I'm sure AI will be fine to slow down if it sees a massive puddle and avoid soaking everyone in 3m radius just for lolz.

> Or even as a pedestrian

Or even as anyone who is ever on the road.

Despite the law, driving in America is a necessity for many. That means our bar for taking it away is high. Quantify the safety delta and have an available alternative, and we can start lowering the bar for taking dangerous drivers off the road. (Frankly either >1 DUI or >1 at-fault crash should result in license revocation. We should also delay license issuance until 18 years old and have restrictions on the license until 20 [1].)

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3343314

> Quantify the safety delta and have an available alternative

I would love it if these comparisons included "bus stats / average passengers". There are ways to just reduce the miles driven and the chances of collisions at the same time, without new tech improvements.

I assume such a change would heavily impact you as well? 40% of all seriously injured in the traffic are single-bike accidents. Here in Sweden that is.

Isn't that what Will Smith's character was told in "I Robot"?

I guess this day has arrived for us.

Definitely sooner than I expected.

I can already see the sign "No manual driving allowed" at the entrance of highways.

I propose 'autoautomobiles only'.

autosquaredmobiles

Autoguideles.

Highways seem like they're safer than other roads but if we had fully autonomous highways I imagine speed limits could be effectively removed drastically reducing travel time.

Don't threaten me with a good time.

And immediately I start singing Red Barchetta in my head…

You and me both!

It's already borderline happening with the satellite supervision.

Here in Italy insurance is 20% more expensive at the very least and the gap is widening if you don't put a tracking device on your car which checks position, speed, etc.

I have a hard time justifying why one would not want it (besides privacy), all people that complain about it are people that regularly drive above the speed limit or pull dangerous overtaking maneuvers.

We have tracking like this for an app where you can rent electric cars in the city short term. Problem is it sometimes flags you, banning you for a month because you went under a bridge or the road has a smaller side road separated by a ~1 meter island limited at 30 but the road you were on is a 70. When it's a rental car app you don't really care to argue but I definitely wouldn't want to deal with this bs with an insurance company. They'd have 0 incentive to resolve this.

Ah yes. The old anti-privacy mantra: you have nothing to worry about, if you have nothing to hide.

I did write "besides privacy" because it is a valid concern indeed.

But considering that most people don't give two damns about their privacy (or at least act like it, keeping 24/7 a tracking device on them and sharing all of their lives non stop) what would be their valid reason to not have a tracking device for insurance purposes on their cars?

Will the data collection and interpretation be perfect? What if the map with the speed limits is inaccurate and my commute goes through a road where the limit is 70, traffic drives at 70, but the system thinks the limit is 30?

My car displays the speed limit in the dash, as a helper, and sometimes the above happens. If it had automatic braking for crossing the speed limit, it would be a disaster.

Also, if I drive 70 on a 70 road completely covered in snow, will the system know I'm doing something dangerous?

Automatic judgement of people is a bad idea, and it surprises me that anyone who is working in software development would think otherwise.

Those are technical not ethical issues.

In any case, the system works fine in Italy, the purpose is only to provide more data in case of collisions.

The idea is that if you're driving legally and you end up in a costly accident you can prove you were driving and acting correctly.

> Those are technical not ethical issues.

They can be football issues, they're still issues.

> you can prove you were driving and acting correctly

Unless there's a technical issue that makes you either unable to prove it, or makes the data say you were at fault.

Look at the thread about the UK Post Office and how many people were wrongfully convicted based on "technical issues".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036

"Just technical issues"

It's a question if you put people's individual "privacy" (quotes because you're driving in public, on public roads paid for by the public, under public laws, and under the public's view - there's not really privacy as to how you're driving, everyone out there can see it) over people's collective right to live?

Road deaths are among the leading causes of death in multiple developed countries.

Roads are public but unless you have someone following around you can't know where everyone is at all times. But with tracker now you have mass surveillance!

We criticize chinese government but we do much worse.

My favorite brain picker question:

What year would the EU* ban human driven cars on public roads?

That's it. Million different opinions ranging from "never" to "within a couple decades for sure", weak, strong opinions, and of course many interesting topics to branch out into.

*: sometimes I ask with US, or particular countries, it doesn't really matter for the sake of conversation.

Fun fact: people working in automotive tend to say within this century, people who like and owned many cars say never :-)

It's not a particularly interesting question as it's just random guesswork and gutfeeling until self-driving cars see actual widespread availability and rollout.

If at some point all new cars have full self-driving capabilities with widely accepted performance, then it's not impossible that after a decade of that as status quo, cars end up shipping with manual driving only being an override for specific maneuvering, and eventually having regular licenses lose rights to manual driving on public roads.

I neither own nor really like cars, but I think a ban within the next 50 years is super unlikely, and anyone that disagrees is delusional :P

Just consider vintage cars: These are vastly more dangerous for both occupants and pedestrians/cyclists than existing cars and also pollute more. They have not been banned in the last century and no ban seems to be coming anytime soon.

If you are not gonna ban vintage cars, why would you ever ban manual driving (which is much less harmful in multiple ways)?

Once adoption picks up, a ban becomes useless anyway because the fraction of problematic cars decreases (and no longer really matters), while any decisive legislative action towards bans gets tons of pushback from enthusiasts (and no real political gain, because the average voter does not give a shit about single digit traffic accident rate reduction anyway).

Have they banned horses yet? My money is on never. This technology doesn’t need a ban to succeed. It just needs to be allowed.

Horse accidents aren't a leading cause of death though. Seems like it'll depend on how thoroughly self-driving becomes a thing of the past on its own.

They were a leading cause of death when they were a common mode of transport.

Riding a horse is very dangerous. Its just regarded as an acceptable risk (its something many people encourage kids to do) for cultural and social reasons. A British government scientific advisor was fired for pointing out that riding a horse carries about 30 times the risk of a "serious adverse effect" as taking ecstasy.

>A British government scientific advisor was fired for pointing out that riding a horse carries about 30 times the risk of a "serious adverse effect" as taking ecstasy.

Could we have a link for this one please?

> Horse accidents aren't a leading cause of death though.

Sure, not now. Because cars replaced them.

> Seems like it'll depend on how thoroughly self-driving becomes a thing of the past on its own.

Based on my experience with Waymo if they come to Seattle in the next two years I won’t buy another car.

Change the question to "highways" then. (at least in most European countries, AFAIK horses are banned from them)

That’s a completely different question though. Horses were banned from railroads too.

You tried to establish self driving cars as a threat to human driven cars using horses as an example.

Highways were invented for cars. Horses were never allowed there.

There’s no comparable proposal for self driving cars.

This comment shows exactly why I like this question.

Lot of related topics to branch out to! I actually wasn't ever interested in the "cut off date", but all these side topics, and why some people think differently about what the trajectory looks like today.

It's no more of a brain picker than "how many beans are there in this black jar that you can't lift or shake?".

It's just saying something without any information.

A change like this is entirely unpredictable from here, because it would be driven (pun intended) far more by political processes than any objective safety consideration.

Yes, and of course you must pay because the autopilot doesn't work when there's snow or rain or sun on the horizon or it's too dark, or the volcano near you is throwing ash and there's wind so you're now in a sandstorm, or wind is carrying sand from the sahara all over the mediterranean to you.

(all of these regularly happen all in the same place)

What's the place?

The Catania area of course is one example.

> More recently, light snowfalls occurred on 9 February 2015, 6 January 2017 and 5 January 2019, but the last heavy snowfall dates back to 17 December 1988.

Says wikipedia. Yeah, I don't know what I expected. Of course there's no actual snow in the meditteranean. It "lightly snowed" 3 times in the last 10 years.

I said the catania area, not the catania city centre. Learn to read perhaps?

This is in the catania area https://imgur.com/a/rhnIGNa

Perhaps you have no clue of what you're talking about?

I had snow 2 days ago… but sure, random guy on the internet who's never been here must educate me -_-' how completely unusual…

this is in calabria https://www.sullaneve.it/articoli/localita-italiane/calabria...

Hopefully!

Yes. That’s exactly how insurance works. Another way to phrase this is I will save a fortune on insurance by taking advantage of self driving cars.

Well really it would be "you get a discount for the percentage of your mileage driven with a autopilot enabled." You can pay less if you drive in a setting that saves the insurance company money (on average).

One day, you may not even get to own a car for “safety reasons”. See gun control

More than the autonomous cars, but it might not be more then you're paying now - unless the autonomous cars are particularly expensive to crash into.

Yes, more than the owner of the self-driving car.

No, not more than you currently pay, because you haven't become more at risk of collision than you are now.