> Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.

Google, AFAIK the only company with cars that are actually autonomous, has US$98 Billion in cash.

It'd have to be a hell of an accident to put a dent in that.

Auto insurers don't face a "catastrophic liability" bankrupting scenario like home insurers might in the case of a natural disaster or fire.

I doubt autonomous car makers will offer this themselves. They'll either partner with existing insurers or try to build a separate insurance provider of their own which does this.

My guess, if this actually plays out, is that existing insurers will create a special autonomy product that will modify rates to reflect differences in risk from standard driving, and autonomy subscriptions will offer those in a bundle.

> High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.

This seems like it can be solved with a deductible.

> Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.

It doesn't prevent chaos, but it does provide ubiquitous cameras. That will be used against people.

I'm ambivalent about that and mostly in a negative direction. On the one hand, I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.

On the other hand, the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving. Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.