The Death of Car Insurance?
If you currently drive a vehicle you automatically need to have car insurance. At least, that's true today, however it might not always be the case in the future.
The best science fiction often speculates on the impact future technology will have on day-to-day life. Advanced vehicles have been a staple in creating a vision of a technologically advanced future.
One of the most popular ideas in film has been that of the flying car, from The Jetsons to Star Wars and beyond. People have dreamed of flying cars and some probably even believed it would be common technology by now. I wonder how many people would believe you if you told them that cars would be driving themselves instead of flying around by the time we went back to the future (for the second time).
Where's my flying car, Marty?
Consumer vehicles are fast becoming so integrated with computers that they can already connect to the internet, understand voice commands and even park themselves. A lot of these new advances are focused on improving safety and eliminating the biggest factor in driving: human error.
While completely autonomous driving isn't a reality for consumers yet, the technology has come close enough that some insurance companies are already acknowledging that the tech will impact their business.
Personal thought: How nuts would the insurance premiums be on flying cars though, am I right?
Why this is a big deal
It's an interesting situation, after all if cars drive themselves, who would be held responsible for any accidents or damage they may cause? The manufacturer? Something tells me there's no way that car manufactures are going to pay insurance companies billions of dollars every year like we do.
Car insurance risk, a.k.a. insurance premiums are currently determined by a number of factors from age to gender as well as the type of car being insured. However, the development of better tracking and sensing technology is already allowing insurance companies to build a better model than that by getting accurate, personalized driving habit data so customers pay for the driving they actually do instead of a mathematical assumption.
The widespread adoption of autonomous cars and collision avoidance systems could absolutely destroy the old auto insurance industry, paving the way for tech-based insurers offering extremely low premiums.
But aren't robots, like, evil?
We've all seen what happens when you mess around with intelligent computers in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Long story short: it never ends well.
There is an inherent danger in letting computers drive us everywhere. Just last week, a pair of hackers gained control of a car through its onboard computer.
So what does all this mean for you?
For the next few years, maybe not much at all. Most cars on the market are still manually-driven vehicles.
Google has a driverless car in the works but doesn't plan to release it until next year. So for now until humans don't have to drive their own cars it looks like you'll still have to shop around for the best car insurance coverage.
The revolution will come someday but until then we have to rely on our navigation system to take us to our destination.