Uber’s sky-high plans spark concerns about auto insurance
The sky's the limit for Uber, who have announced plans to take their ride-hailing service to the air.
Los Angeles, Dallas-Forth Worth, Paris and Dubai are some of the cities who have been initially selected to welcome the program, which plans to have aerial vehicles active by 2020. Commercial journey’s are predicted to be fully accessible by 2023.
The company aims to help commuters beat bust traffic and speed up journey times between the suburbs and metropolitan cores in large cities.
However, in the last year alone Uber has already faced some serious setbacks after it saw a stream of accidents from its self-driving cars. Of course, this has sparked worries about the safety of its planned autonomous flying vehicles, known as vertical take-off and landing aircrafts (or VTOL).
This is a big talking point amongst experts in the insurance industry, who point out the heightened risks of taking ride-sharing into the air.
“When something goes wrong, it will be a much more serious type of claim,” said Thom Rickert, vice president and emerging risk specialist of Trident Public Risk Solutions. “When you have something falling out of the sky, not only are the passengers endangered on the vehicle, but there could be much more significant damage on the ground.”
Uber drivers are already expected to be covered by a specialist form of auto insurance, separate from their personal policy. The planned autonomous vehicles throw up new fears that their counterparts on the road do not face, namely hacking, which could see an outside person taking control of the car’s speed or even altitude.
“From an insurance standpoint, it would be a significant increase in the volume of aviation insurance because it would take that same sort of pattern that you see with helicopter taxi services. How do you then adapt [insurance] to the type of vehicle, with a flying taxi?” questions Rickert.
Uber is now setting its sights on adding another launch city to its UberAIR roster. The company will be taking applications from cities around the world as of July 1.