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The additional safety devices that are in place to reduce accident do help, but the idea of no accidents involving vehicles will never happen. The ease of getting a driver license, and humans driving habits Insurance companies will always have auto claims. Technology has helped, but relying solely on the new technology to prevent accidents is asking for to much. A driverless vehicle is a nice concept, but our current road conditions to create such an atmosphere states would have to spend Billions of dollars to make our roadways at least half way decent.
If Term Life companies are willing to write policies for $20 per month, why wouldn’t auto carriers be willing to do it? If their loss ratios are going to be that low, they’d be in good shape. Low overhead, high profit. I’m not sure agencies would continue to write auto if the reward was that low, however. GEICO would write 99% of all auto policies.
I would say that the additional features being added to newer cars like FaceBook, Twitter, etc will cause accidents. Who needs to FB and Tweet while they drive? Also, I don’t see texting going away anytime soon and we know that people love to text and drive. Interesting article but I don’t see it happening.
Sure, just like nuclear power resulted in electrical energy that’s too cheap to meter.
The caveman will have to eat the gecko & cause mayhem for the good neighbors at the university.
No. Read – the google car has a manual override. So you will need $5M CPL limits for gross negligence in your errant decision to override at an inappropriate time.
Not to mention all the old farts who will continue to insist on driving their 1963 Coverette (or whichever collectible)!
I do agree that there will always be accidents of some kind: A tree can still fall on a car that drives itself, or it can be vandalized, etc etc. However, I don’t think it is crazy to say that within the next 2 decades, the auto claim industry will be drastically different due to robotic cars and the overall increase in safety/prevention features integrated into them. That being said, there will always be a market for insurance. It is not going anywhere.
This has been going on for years. The last statistic I saw, there were 40% fewer motor vehicle accidents in 2008 than in the 80′s.
It isn’t just the tech stuff in the article. Even low-tech solutions like rumble bars on the side of the road are lowering frequency. Severity on the other hand has increased due to the cost of the technology in vehicles and inflation, in medical costs in particular.
I agree this will help lower frequency of auto accidents but as many above have said too many other variables that can’t be accounted for: trees falling, vandalism, motorcycles, computer glitches, large satellite or grid failure, etc. All these other factors will continue to have an impact on auto accidents but I do see a trending down of frequency of claims as the norm.
I would expect that at least some of the cost savings generated by reduced claims frequency, if there are any, would be offset by the increased cost of fixing the safety devices/new technology themselves, should they be damaged.
Ah but yes, there are still Attorney’s and they trump all the safety devices,
Commercial aviaton has hardly any accidents. It has become the safest form of transportation known to man. Nobody has considered there is no or little need for insurance covering commercial aviation. As long as there are human beings and some of them are lawyers we will always need insurance.
It would seem that walking is safe… Yet one slip and fall can cost an insurance company $1MM once the lawyers get involved.
Eric