[HN Gopher] Self Driving Car Insurance
___________________________________________________________________
Self Driving Car Insurance
Author : KellyCriterion
Score : 141 points
Date : 2026-01-30 15:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lemonade.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lemonade.com)
| FrankWilhoit wrote:
| One's first thought is that they ought to be running away from
| underwriting this as fast as they can go. But then one realizes
| that it is all profit -- they need never pay a claim, because in
| accidents involving autonomous vehicles, it will never be
| possible to establish fault; and then one sees that the primary
| purpose of most automations is to obscure responsibility.
| nradov wrote:
| You're not making any sense. In terms of civil liability, fault
| is attached to the vehicle regardless of what autonomous
| systems might have been in use at the time of a collision.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Or even who was driving it, in the case of ordinary cars.
| jgbuddy wrote:
| > and then one sees that the primary purpose of most
| automations is to obscure responsibility.
|
| Are you saying that the investments in FSD by tesla have been
| with the goal of letting drivers get a way with accidents? The
| law is black and white
| FrankWilhoit wrote:
| What is the "driver"? Who wrote which line of the software?
| Who tested it? Who approved its deployment? The rest is
| lawyers.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| One might imagine that lower courts won't determine fault, one
| would be wrong.
| deelayman wrote:
| I think there's a narrow unregulated space where this could be
| true. I'm exercising my creativity trying to imagine it - where
| automations are built with the outcome of obscured
| responsibility in mind. And I could understand profit as a
| possible driving factor for that outcome.
|
| As an extreme end of a spectrum example, there's been worry and
| debate for decades over automating military capabilities to the
| point where it becomes "push button to win war". There used to
| be, and hopefully still is, lots of restraint towards heading
| in that direction - in recognition of the need for ethics
| validation in automated judgements. The topic comes up now and
| then around Tesla's, and impossible decisions that FSD will
| have to make.
|
| So at a certain point, and it may be right around the point of
| serious physical harm, the design decision to have or not have
| human-in-the-middle accountability seems to run into ethical
| constraints. In reality it's the ruthless bottom line focused
| corps - that don't seem to be the norm, but may have an
| outsized impact - that actually push up against ethical
| constraints. But even then, I would be wary as an executive
| documenting a decision to disregard potential harms at one of
| them shops. That line is being tested, but it's still there.
|
| In my actual experience with automations, they've always been
| derived from laziness / reducing effort for everyone, or
| "because we can", and sometimes a need to reduce human error.
| sabareesh wrote:
| Tesla have their own Insurance product which is already very
| competitive compared to other providers. Not sure if lemonade can
| beat them . Tesla's insurance product has similar objective in
| place already where it rewards self driving over manual driving.
| kjksf wrote:
| Tesla is cooperating with Lemonade on this by providing them
| necessary user driving data.
|
| If Tesla didn't want Lemonade to provide this, they could block
| them.
|
| Strategically, Tesla doesn't want to be an insurer. They
| started the insurance product years ago, before Lemonade also
| offered this, to make FSD more attractive to buyers.
|
| But the expansion stalled, maybe because the state bureaucracy
| or maybe because Tesla shifted priority to other things.
|
| In conclusion: Tesla is happy that Lemonade offers this. It
| makes Tesla cars more attractive to buyers without Tesla doing
| the work of starting an insurance company in every state.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > But the expansion stalled, maybe because the state
| bureaucracy or maybe because Tesla shifted priority to other
| things.
|
| If the math was mathing, it would be _malpractice_ not to
| expand it. I 'm betting that their scheme simply wasn't
| workable, given the extremely high costs of claims (Tesla
| repairs aren't cheap) relative to the low rates that they
| were collecting on premiums. The cheap premiums are probably
| a form of market dumping to get people to buy their FSD
| product, the sales of which boosts their share price.
| Veserv wrote:
| It was not workable. They have a loss ratio of >100% [1],
| as in they paid out more in claims than received in
| premiums before even accounting for literally any other
| costs. Industry average is ~60-80% to stay profitable when
| including other costs.
|
| They released the Tesla Insurance product because their
| cars were excessively expensive to insure, increasing
| ownership costs, which was impacting sales. By releasing
| the unprofitable Tesla Insurance product, they could
| subsidize ownership costs making the cars more attractive
| to buy right now which pumped revenues immediately in
| return for a "accidental" write-down in the future.
|
| [1] https://peakd.com/tesla/@newageinv/teslas-push-into-
| insuranc...
| redanddead wrote:
| Who was paying for this?
| Onavo wrote:
| You as the consumer when you buy a tesla car that's twice
| the price of what you can get it for in Asia. Teslas are
| very cheap to produce.
|
| Remember with their own insurance they also have access
| to the parts at cost.
| Veserv wrote:
| That is not true. Since Tesla was losing money on their
| insurance to boost sales the customers were not paying
| for it since they were receiving a service for below
| cost.
|
| The people paying were actually the retirement funds who
| fronted Tesla's cash reserves when they purchased Tesla
| stock and the US government paying for it in the form of
| more tax credits on sales that would not have otherwise
| materialized without this financial fraud. But do not
| worry, retirement funds and the US government may have
| lost, but it boosted Tesla sales and stock valuation so
| that Elon Musk could reach his KPIs to get his multiple
| tens of billions of dollars of payout.
| redanddead wrote:
| Wow this went deep ahaha
| redanddead wrote:
| The math should've mathed. Better data === lower losses
| right? They probably weren't able to get it to work quite
| right on the tech side and were eating fat losses during an
| already bad time in the market.
|
| It'll come back.
|
| Lemonade or Tesla if you find this, let's pilot, i'm a
| founder in sunnyvale, insurtech vertical at pnp
| redanddead wrote:
| You'd be very surprised. Distribution works wonders. You could
| have a large carrier taking over Tesla's own vehicles in
| markets they care about. The difference then would be loss
| ratios on the data collection, like does LIDAR data really beat
| Progressive Snapshot?
|
| The two are measuring data for different sources of losses for
| carriers.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| If it autonomous or self-driving then why is the person in the
| car paying for the insurance? Surely if it's Tesla making the
| decisions, they need the insurance?
| jgbuddy wrote:
| Because the operator is liable? Tesla as a company isn't
| driving the car, it's a ML model running on something like HW4
| on bare metal in the car itself. Would that make the silicon
| die legally liable?
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Who's the "operator" of an "autonomous" car? If I sit in it
| and it drives me around, how am I an "operator"?
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you get on a horse and let go of the reins you are also
| considered the operator of the horse. Such are the
| definitions in our society.
| kyleee wrote:
| Great analogy, lol
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Sounds like it's neither self-driving, nor autonomous, if I'm
| on the hook if it goes wrong.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Yeah, Tesla gets to blame the "driver", and has a history
| of releasing partial and carefully curated subsets of data
| from crashes to try to shift as much blame onto the driver
| as possible.
|
| And the system is designed to set up drivers for failure.
|
| An HCI challenge with mostly autonomous systems is that
| operators lose their awareness of the system, and when
| things go wrong you can easily get _worse_ outcomes than if
| the system was fully manual with an engaged operator.
|
| This is a well known challenge in the nuclear energy sector
| and airline industry (Air France 447) - how do you keep
| operators fully engaged even though they almost never need
| to intervene, because otherwise they're likely to be
| missing critical context and make wrong decisions. These
| days you could probably argue the same is true of software
| engineers reviewing LLM code that's often - but not always
| - correct.
| redanddead wrote:
| > has a history of releasing partial and carefully
| curated subsets of data from crashes to try to shift as
| much blame onto the driver as possible
|
| Really? Thats crazy.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Its neither self-driving, nor autonomous, eventually not
| even a car! (as Tesla slowly exits the car business). It
| will be 'insurance' on Speculation as a service, as Tesla
| skyrockets to $20T market cap. Tesla will successfully
| transition from a small revenue to pre-revenue company:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYJdKW-UnFQ
|
| The last few years of Tesla 'growth' show how this
| transition is unfolding. S and X production is shutdown,
| just a few more models to shutdown.
| rubyfan wrote:
| I wonder if they will try to sell off the car business
| once they can hype up something else. It seems odd to
| just let the car business die.
| redanddead wrote:
| Wild prediction, would love to hear the rest of it
| iwontberude wrote:
| Especially since they can push regressions over the air and
| you could be lulled into a sense of safety and robustness
| that isn't there and bam you pay the costs of the
| regressions, not Tesla.
| close04 wrote:
| The point is if the liability is always exclusively with the
| human driver then any system in that car is at best a "driver
| assist". Claims that "it drives itself" or "it's autonomous"
| are just varying degrees of lying. I call it a partial lie
| rather than a partial truth because the result more often
| than not is that the customer is tricked into thinking the
| system is more capable than it is, and because that outcome
| is more dangerous than the opposite.
|
| Any car has varying degrees of autonomy, even the ones with
| no assists (it will safely self-drive you all the way to the
| accident site, as they say). But the car is either driven by
| the human with the system's help, or is driven by the system
| with or without the human's help.
|
| A car can't have 2 drivers. The only real one is the one the
| law holds responsible.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| It's because you bought it. Don't buy it if you don't want to
| insure.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep, you bought it, you own it, you choose to operate it on
| the public roads. Therefore your liability.
| 9rx wrote:
| If you bought and owned it, you could sell it to another
| auto manufacturer for some pretty serious amounts of money.
|
| In reality, you acquired a license to use it. Your
| liability should only go as far as you have agreed to
| identify the licenser.
| recursive wrote:
| You can actually do that. Except that they could just buy
| one themselves.
|
| Companies exist that buy cars just to tear them down and
| publish reports on what they find.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Companies exist that buy cars just to tear them down
| and publish reports on what they find._
|
| What does it mean to tear down software, exactly? Are you
| thinking of something like decompilation?
|
| You can do that, but you're probably not going to learn
| all that much, and you still can't use it in any
| meaningful sense as you never bought it in the first
| place. You only licensed use of it as a consumer (and now
| that it is subscription-only, maybe not even that). If
| you have to rebuild the whole thing yourself anyway, what
| have you really gained? Its not exactly a secret how the
| technology works, only costly to build.
|
| _> Except that they could just buy one themselves._
|
| That is unlikely, unless you mean buying Tesla outright?
| Getting a license to use it as a manufacturer is much
| more realistic, but still a license.
| recursive wrote:
| Check out Munro and Associates. I'm not talking about
| software. The whole car.
| 9rx wrote:
| For what reason?
|
| In case you have forgotten, the discussion is about self-
| driving technology, and specifically Tesla's at that. The
| original questioner asked why he is liable when it is
| Tesla's property that is making the decisions. Of course,
| the most direct answer is because Tesla disclaims any
| liability in the license agreement you must agree to in
| order to use said property.
|
| Which has nothing to do with an independent consulting
| firm or "the whole car" as far as I can see. The
| connection you are trying to establish is unclear.
| Perhaps you pressed the wrong 'reply' button by mistake?
| recursive wrote:
| I started responding to this. I interpreted it to be
| referring to the whole car.
|
| > Yep, you bought it, you own it, you choose to operate
| it on the public roads. Therefore your liability.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I don't think Tesla lets you buy FSD
| scottyah wrote:
| They do, until Feb 14th.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Even now I think it's a revocable license
| davidhunter wrote:
| Seems like the role of the human operator in the age of AI is
| to be the entity they can throw in jail if the machine fails
| (e.g. driver, pilot)
| taneq wrote:
| I've said for years that pragmatically, our definition of a
| "person" is an entity that can accept liability and take
| blame.
| wcfrobert wrote:
| LLCs can't go to jail though
| amitav1 wrote:
| Because LLCs aren't people
| sroussey wrote:
| Not to be confused with "human" thanks to SCOTUS.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Not an expert here, but I recall reading that certain European
| countries (Spain???) allow liability to be put on the
| autonomous driving system, not the person in the car. Does
| anyone know more about this?
| bluGill wrote:
| That is the case everywhere. It is common when buying a
| product for the contract to include who has liability for
| various things. The price often changes by a lot depending on
| who has liability.
|
| Cars are traditionally sold as the customer has liability.
| Nothing stops a car maker (or even an individual dealer) from
| selling cars today taking all the insurance liability in any
| country I know of - they don't for what I hope are obvious
| reasons (bad drivers will be sure to buy those cars since it
| is a better deal for them an in turn a worse deal for good
| drivers), but they could.
|
| Self driving is currently sold as customers has liability
| because that is how it has always been done. I doubt it will
| change, but it is only because I doubt there will ever be
| enough advantage as to be worth it for someone else to take
| on the liability - but I could be wrong.
| kjksf wrote:
| Because that's the law of the land currently.
|
| The product you buy is called "FSD Supervised". It clearly
| states you're liable and must supervise the system.
|
| I don't think there's law that would allow Tesla (or anyone
| else) to sell a passenger car with unsupervised system.
|
| If you take Waymo or Tesla Robotaxi in Austin, you are not
| liable for accidents, Google or Tesla is.
|
| That's because they operate on limited state laws that allow
| them to provide such service but the law doesn't allow selling
| such cars to people.
|
| That's changing. Quite likely this year we will have federal
| law that will allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-
| driving, in which case the insurance/liability will obviously
| land on the maker of the system, not person present in the car.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| I see. So not Tesla's product they are using to sell
| insurance around isn't "Full Self-Driving" or "Autonomous"
| like the page says.
| FeloniousHam wrote:
| My current FSD usage is 90% over ~2000 miles (since v14.x).
| Besides driving everywhere, everyday with FSD, I have
| driven 4 hours garage to hotel valet without intervention.
| It is absolutely "Full Self-Driving" and "Autonomous".
|
| FSD isn't perfect, but it is everyday amazing and useful.
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Yet still on relying you to cover it with your insurance.
| Again, clearly not autonomous.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Liability is a separate matter from autonomy. I assume
| you'd consider yourself autonomous, yet it's your
| employer's insurance that will be liable if you have an
| accident while driving a company vehicle.
|
| If the company required a representative to sit in the
| car with you and participate in the driving (e.g. by
| monitoring and taking over before an accident), then
| there's a case to be made that you're not fully
| autonomous.
| buran77 wrote:
| > it's your employer's insurance that will be liable if
| you have an accident while driving a company vehicle
|
| I think you're mixing some concepts.
|
| There's car insurance paid by the owner of the car, for
| the car. There's workplace accident insurance, paid by
| the employer for the employee. The liability isn't
| assigned by default, but by determining who's
| responsible.
|
| The driver is always legally responsible for accidents
| caused by their negligence. If you play with your phone
| behind the wheel and kill someone, even while working and
| driving a company car, the company's insurance might pay
| for the damage but you go to prison. The company will
| recover the money from you. Their work accident insurance
| will pay nothing.
|
| The test you can run in your head: will you get arrested
| if you fall asleep at the wheel and crash? If yes, then
| it's not autonomous or self driving. It just has driver
| assistance. It's not that the car can't drive itself at
| all, just that it doesn't meet the bar for the entire
| legal concept of "driver/driving".
|
| "Almost" self driving is like jumping over a canyon and
| almost making it to the other side. Good effort, bad
| outcome.
| wat10000 wrote:
| If it was full self driving, wouldn't your usage be 100%?
| pests wrote:
| Sometimes a car is fun to drive.
| fragmede wrote:
| It refuses to engage above, like, 80.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _My current FSD usage is 90% over ~2000 miles_
|
| I'd guess my Subaru's lane-keeping utilisation is in the
| same ballpark. (By miles, not minutes. And yes, I'm safer
| when it and I are watching the road than when I'm
| watching the road alone.)
| olyjohn wrote:
| My favorite feature of Subaru's system is when you change
| lanes, and it stays locked onto the car in the slower
| lane and slams on the brakes. People behind you love
| that.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Waymo is also a livery service which you normally aren't
| liable for as a passenger of taxi or limousine unless you
| have deep pockets. /IANAL
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You can sell autonomous vehicles to consumers all day long.
| There's no US federal law prohibiting that, as long as
| they're compliant with FMVSS as all consumer vehicles are
| required to be.
| 2III7 wrote:
| Without LIDAR and/or additional sensors, Tesla will never be
| able to provide "real" FSD, no matter how wonderful their
| software controlling the car is.
|
| Also, self driving is a feature of a vehicle someone owns, I
| don't understand how that should exempt anyone from insuring
| their property.
|
| Waymo and others are providing a taxi service where the
| driver is not a human. You don't pay insurance when you ride
| Uber or Bolt or any other regular taxi service.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Also, self driving is a feature of a vehicle someone
| owns, I don't understand how that should exempt anyone from
| insuring their property.
|
| Well practically speaking, there's nothing stopping anyone
| from voluntarily assuming liability for arbitrary things.
| If Tesla assumes the liability for my car, then even if I
| still require my "own" insurance for legal purposes, the
| marginal cost of covering the remaining risk is going to be
| close to zero.
| arijun wrote:
| Never say never--it's not physically impossible. But yes,
| as it stands, it seems that Tesla will not be self driving
| any time soon (if ever).
| kjksf wrote:
| They literally just (in the last few days) started
| unsupervised robotaxis in Austin.
|
| They are as self-driving as a car can be.
|
| This is different than the one where they had a human
| supervisor in passenger seat (which they still do
| elsewhere).
|
| And different than the one where they didn't have human
| supervisor but did have a follow car.
|
| Now they have a few robotaxis that are self driving.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Have you actually ridden in one? It's unclear whether
| this is a real thing or not.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is a very low effort post. Was it really too
| difficult for you to Google: "youtube tesla robotaxis in
| Austin"? It took me about 7 seconds. There are lots of
| videos.
| thg wrote:
| It was just another marketing stunt to pump the stock
| price before their terrible earnings report. One
| "unsupervised" unit, with the supervisor in a follow car,
| that nobody could actually get and drive around in.
|
| https://electrek.co/2026/01/28/teslas-unsupervised-
| robotaxis...
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Stop reading electrek.
|
| https://x.com/davidmoss/status/2016939137031381487?s=46
| kolbe wrote:
| > Quite likely this year we will have federal law that will
| allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-driving, in
| which case the insurance/liability will obviously land on the
| maker of the system, not person present in the car.
|
| This is news to me. This context seems important to
| understanding Tesla's decision to stop selling FSD. If
| they're on the hook for insurance, then they will need to
| dynamically adjust what they charge to reflect insurance
| costs.
| arijun wrote:
| I imagine insurance would be split in two in that case.
| Carmakers would not want to be liable for e.g. someone
| striking you in a hit-and-run.
| smallnix wrote:
| If the car that did a hit-and-run was operated autonomously
| the insurance of the maker of that car should pay.
| Otherwise it's a human and the situation falls into the
| bucket of what we already have today.
|
| So yes, carmakers would pay in a hit-and-run.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If the car that did a hit-and-run was operated
| autonomously the insurance of the maker of that car
| should pay_
|
| Why? That's not their fault. If a car hits and runs my
| uninsured bicycle, the manufacturer isn't liable. (My
| personal umbrella or other insurance, on the other hand,
| may cover it.)
| graeme wrote:
| They're describing a situation of liability, not mere
| damage. If yor bicycle is hit you didn't do anything
| wrong.
|
| If you run into someone on your bike and are at fault
| then you generally would be liable.
|
| They're talking about the hypothetical where you're on
| your bike, which was sold as an autobomous bike and the
| bike manufacturer's software fully drives the bike, and
| it runs into someone and is at fault.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Tacking "Supervised" on the end of "Full Self Driving" is
| just contradictory. Perhaps if it was "Partial Self Driving"
| then it wouldn't be so confusing.
| pests wrote:
| Its only to differentiate it from their "Unsupervised FSD"
| which is what they call it now.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| That is redundant and doesn't make the other any less
| contradictory
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Quite likely this year we will have federal law that will
| allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-driving, in
| which case the insurance/liability will obviously land on the
| maker of the system, not person present in the car.
|
| You raise an important point here. Is it economically
| feasible for system makers to bear the responsibility of
| self-driving car accidents? It seems impossible, unless the
| cars are _much_ more expensive to cover the potential future
| costs. I 'm very curious how Waymo insures their cars today.
| I assume they have a bespoke insurance contract negotiated
| with a major insurer. Also, do we know the initial cost of
| each Waymo car (to say nothing of ongoing costs from
| compute/mapping/etc.)? It must be very high (2x?) given all
| of the special navigation equipment that is added to each
| car.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Generally speaking, liability for a thing falls on the
| owner/operator. That person can sue the manufacturer to recover
| the damages if they want. At some point, I expect it to become
| somewhat routine for insurures to pay out, then sue the
| manufacturer to recover.
| amelius wrote:
| Or at some point subscribing to a service may be easier than
| owning the damn thing.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| All according to plan
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| It already doesn't make sense to own a car for me. It's
| cheaper to just call an Uber.
| gffrd wrote:
| For some this is the case. For others, this is not the
| case.
| amelius wrote:
| some -> most ?
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm guessing that's a fairly city viewpoint. My car is
| setup with roofrack and carries a lot of other gear I
| want. I'm regularly in places without reliable cell etc.
| Visiting friends can easily be an hour drive.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Yes, a city viewport. I usually just walk, but when I
| don't I most often take the subway, not even Uber. Though
| I feel like in Toronto the subway or some part thereof is
| closed or under maintenance or whatever way too often.
| It's not very reliable.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Depends how often.
|
| Multiple Ubers per day are expensive. ($55 x 365 =
| $20,000)
|
| All in, a budget car costs less than half of that per
| year.
|
| But if you replace some of that with public
| transportation, or a car is otherwise impractical, the
| math changes.
| amelius wrote:
| If you take off the conspiracy hat, you will see that
| there are many advantages to not owning a product. Such
| as that the vendor's incentives are better aligned with
| yours. For example, if the thing breaks, it is in
| __their__ best interest to fix it (or to not let it break
| in the first place). This also has positive implications
| for sustainability.
| physicles wrote:
| It's also in their best interest to set the price so as
| to maximize their own profits. If switching costs or
| monopoly power allow them to set a higher price, they
| will do so.
|
| Have we learned nothing from a decade of subscription
| services?
| amelius wrote:
| Nobody said we should allow monopolies?
| fragmede wrote:
| Especially Adam Smith. The claims are scattered
| throughout _The Wealth of Nations_ , but he hated them
| with specificity. He said they raise prices and lower
| quality, misallocate capital, and corrupt politics, among
| other things.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Ah, but could one not argue that the owner of the self-
| driving car is _not_ the operator, and it is the car, or
| perhaps Tesla, which operates it?
| sroussey wrote:
| Mercedes agrees. They take on liability when their system
| is operated appropriately.
| kube-system wrote:
| They say they will, but until relevant laws are updated,
| this is mostly contractual and not a change to legal
| liability. It is similar to how an insurance company
| takes responsibility for the way you operate your car.
|
| If your local legal system does not absolve you from
| liability when operating an autonomous vehicle, you can
| still be sued, and Mercedes has no say in this... even
| though they could reimburse you.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| No. They don't. It was vaporware made to fool people
| including you. You could never actually order it and it's
| canceled now in favor of an L2 system.
| kube-system wrote:
| All Tesla vehicles require the person behind the steering
| wheel to supervise the operations of the vehicle and avoid
| accidents at all times.
|
| Also, even if a system is fully automated, that doesn't
| necessarily legally isolate the person who owns it or set
| it into motion from liability. Vehicle law would generally
| need to be updated to change this.
| einpoklum wrote:
| But that might be considered a legal trick. Suppose that,
| when you pay for a taxi, the standard conditions of
| carriage would make it your responsibility to supervise
| the vehicle operation and alert the driver so as to avoid
| accidents. Would the taxi driver and taxi company be able
| to eschew liability through that formalism? Probably not.
| The fact that Tesla makes you sign something does not
| automatically make the signed document valid and
| enforceable.
|
| It may be that it is; but then, if you are required to be
| watchful at all time, and be able to take over from the
| autonomous vehicle at all times, then - the autonomy
| doesn't really help you all that much, does it?
| kube-system wrote:
| No, Tesla doesn't assign you liability by making you sign
| something. The law makes the driver of a vehicle liable
| for the operation, as it always has.
|
| My first sentence was to say that even _if_ the law
| treats autonomous vehicles differently, Tesla doesn't
| sell one.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > The law makes the driver of a vehicle liable for the
| operation, as it always has.
|
| So, either those Tesla's don't really self-drive (which
| may be the case, I don't know, but then the whole
| discussion is moot), or they do, in which case, the human
| wasn't the one driving and may thus avoid liability.
|
| Then of course there is the possibility that the court
| might be convinced the car was being drive
| collaboratively by the human and the car/the computer, in
| which case Tesla and the human might share the liability.
| IANA(US)L though.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| but tesla is the operator
| fragmede wrote:
| Aside from the human in the vehicle holding the steering
| wheel with a foot on the pedal, that is.
| loeg wrote:
| It isn't fully autonomous yet. For any future system sold as
| level 5 (or level 4?), I agree with your contention -- the
| manufacturer of the level 5 autonomous system is the one who
| bears primary liability and therefore should insure. "FSD"
| isn't even level 3.
|
| (Though, there is still an element of owner/operator
| maintenance for level 4/5 vehicles -- e.g., if the owner fails
| to replace tires below 4/32", continues to operate the vehicle,
| and it causes an injury, that is partially the owner/operator's
| fault.)
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Wouldn't that requirement completely kill any chance of a L5
| system being profitable? If company X is making tons of self-
| driving cars, and now has to pay insurance for _every single
| one_ , that's a mountain of cash. They'd go broke
| immediately.
|
| I realize it would suck to be blamed for something the car
| did when you _weren 't_ driving it, but I'm not sure how else
| it could be financially feasible.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The way it works in states like California currently is
| that the permit holder has to post an insurance bond that
| accidents and judgements are taken out against. It's a
| fixed overhead.
| loeg wrote:
| No? Insurance costs would be passed through to consumers in
| the form of up-front purchase price. And probably the cost
| to insure L5 systems for liability will be very low. If it
| isn't low, the autonomous system isn't very safe.
| abtinf wrote:
| You insure the property, not the person.
| redanddead wrote:
| well it's the risk, the combination ..
|
| it's why young drivers pay more for insurance
| ck2 wrote:
| The coder and sensor manufacturers need the insurance for
| wrongful death lawsuits
|
| and Musk for removing lidar so it keeps jumping across high
| speed traffic at shadows because the visual cameras can't see
| true depth
|
| 99% of the people on this website are coders and know how even
| one small typo can cause random fails, yet you trust them to
| make you an alpha/beta tester at high speed?
| djoldman wrote:
| That's probably the future; Mercedes currently does do this in
| limited form:
|
| https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a39481699/what-happens-if-...
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Not "currently," "used to":
| https://www.theverge.com/transportation/860935/mercedes-
| driv...
|
| It was way too limited to be useful to anyone.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Not all insurance claims are based off of the choices of the
| driver.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Surely if it 's Tesla making the decisions, they need the
| insurance?_
|
| Why surely? Turning on cruise control doesn't absolve motorists
| of their insurance requirement.
|
| And the premise is false. While Tesla does "not maintain as
| much insurance coverage as many other companies do," there
| _are_ "policies that [they] do have" [1]. (What it insures is a
| separate question.)
|
| [1]
| https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605/0...
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Cruise control is hardly relevant to a discussion of
| liability for autonomous vehicle operation.
| fragmede wrote:
| In the context of ultramodern cruise control (eg comma.ai),
| which has a radar to track the distance to the car (if any)
| in front of you, and cameras so the car can wind left or
| right and track the freeway, I think it does.
| sroussey wrote:
| Not unless they are marketing it as "autopilot" or some
| such that a random consumer would reasonably assume meant
| autopilot.
|
| And I'd include "AI driver" as an example.
| olyjohn wrote:
| A random consumer doesn't actually understand what
| Autopilot means. Most people don't have pilot's licenses.
| And cars don't fly. Did you not see all the debacles
| around it when it first came out?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I think there is an even bigger insurance problem to worry
| about: if autonomous vehicles become common and are a lot safer
| than manual driven vehicles, insurance rates for human driven
| cars could wind up exploding as the risk pool becomes much
| smaller and statistically riskier. We could go from paying
| $200/month to $2000/month if robo taxis start dominating
| cities.
| mavhc wrote:
| The fact you think $200 per month is sane is amusing to
| people in other countries
| theodric wrote:
| Hell, I was paying EUR180/yr for my New Beetle a decade
| ago...
| wavesquid wrote:
| Is that low or high?
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| I'm guessing that other developed countries don't need
| 6-7 figure injury coverage.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Haha, yes, today already sucks badly in many US markets.
| Imagine what will happen when the only people driving cars
| manually are "enthusiasts".
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > if autonomous vehicles become common and are a lot safer
| than manual driven vehicles, insurance rates for human driven
| cars could wind up exploding as the risk pool becomes much
| smaller and statistically riskier.
|
| The assumption there is that the remaining human drivers
| would be the higher risk ones, but why would that be the
| case?
|
| One of the primary movers of high risk driving is that
| someone goes to the bar, has too many drinks, then needs both
| themselves and their car to get home. Autonomous vehicles can
| obviously improve this by getting them home in their car
| without them driving it, but if they do, the risk profile of
| the remaining human drivers _improves_. At worst they 're
| less likely to be hit by a drunk driver, at best the drunk
| drivers are the early adopters of autonomous vehicles and opt
| themselves out of the human drivers pool.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Drunk driving isn't the primary mover of high risk driving.
| Rather you have:
|
| 1. People who can't afford self driving cars (now the
| insurance industry has a good proxy for income that they
| couldn't tap into before)
|
| 2. Enthusiasts who like driving their cars (cruisers,
| racers, Helcat revving, people who like doing donuts,
| etc...)
|
| 3. Older people who don't trust technology.
|
| None of those are good risk pools to be in. Also, if self
| driving cars go mainstream, they are bound to include the
| safest drivers overnight, so whatever accidents/crashes
| happen afterwards are covered by a much smaller and
| "active" risk pool. Oh, and those self driving cars are
| expensive:
|
| * If you hit one and are at fault, you might pay out
| 1-200k, most states only require 25k-50k of coverage...so
| you need more coverage or expect to pay more for incident.
|
| * Self driving cars have a lot of sensors/recorders. While
| this could work to your advantage (proving that you aren't
| at fault), it often isn't (they have evidence that you were
| at fault). Whereas before fault might have been much more
| hazy (both at fault, or both no fault).
|
| The biggest factor comes if self driving cars really are
| much safer than human drivers. They will basically
| disappear from the insurance market, or somehow be covered
| by product liability instead of insurance...and the
| remaining drivers will be in a pool of the remaining
| accidents that they will have to cover on their own.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Drunk driving isn't the primary mover of high risk
| driving.
|
| It kind of is. They're responsible for something like 30%
| of traffic fatalities despite being a far smaller
| percentage of drivers.
|
| > People who can't afford self driving cars (now the
| insurance industry has a good proxy for income that they
| couldn't tap into before)
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30172108/
|
| But also, wouldn't they already have this by using the
| vehicle model and year?
|
| > Enthusiasts who like driving their cars (cruisers,
| racers, Helcat revving, people who like doing donuts,
| etc...)
|
| Again something that seems like it would already be
| accounted for by vehicle model.
|
| > Older people who don't trust technology.
|
| How sure are we that the people who don't trust
| technology are older? And again, the insurance company
| already knows your age.
|
| > Also, if self driving cars go mainstream, they are
| bound to include the safest drivers overnight
|
| Are they? They're more likely to include the people who
| spend the most time in cars, which is another _higher_
| risk pool, because it allows those people to spend the
| time on a phone /laptop instead of driving the car, which
| is worth more to people the more time they spend doing it
| and so justifies the cost of a newer vehicle more easily.
|
| > Oh, and those self driving cars are expensive
|
| Isn't that more of a problem for the self-driving pool?
| Also, isn't most of the cost that the sensors aren't as
| common and they'd end up costing less as a result of
| volume production anyway?
|
| > Self driving cars have a lot of sensors/recorders.
| While this could work to your advantage (proving that you
| aren't at fault), it often isn't (they have evidence that
| you were at fault). Whereas before fault might have been
| much more hazy (both at fault, or both no fault).
|
| Which is only a problem for the worse drivers who are
| actually at fault, which makes them more likely to move
| into the self-driving car pool.
|
| > The biggest factor comes if self driving cars really
| are much safer than human drivers.
|
| The biggest factor is which drivers switch to self-
| driving cars. If half of human drivers switched to self-
| driving cars but they were chosen completely at random
| then the insurance rates for the remaining drivers would
| be essentially unaffected. How safe they are is only
| relevant insofar as it affects your chances of getting
| into a collision with another vehicle, and if they're
| safer then it would make that chance go _down_ to have
| more of them on the road.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Only .61% of car crashes involve fatalities, so that's
| like .2% of car crashes you are referring to. Probably
| more due to alcohol, but we don't know the ratio of
| accidents that involve alcohol, which would be more
| telling.
|
| > How sure are we that the people who don't trust
| technology are older? And again, the insurance company
| already knows your age
|
| Boomers are already the primary anti-EV demographic, with
| the complaint that real cars have engines. It doesn't
| matter if they know your age of state laws keep them from
| acting on it.
|
| > that more of a problem for the self-driving pool? Also,
| isn't most of the cost that the sensors aren't as common
| and they'd end up costing less as a result of volume
| production anyway?
|
| I think you misunderstood me: If you get into an accident
| and are found at fault, you are responsible for damage to
| the other car. Now, if it's a clunker Toyota, that will
| be a few thousand dollars, if it's a roll Royce, it's a
| few hundred thousand dollars. The reason insurances are
| increasing lately is that the average car on the road is
| more expensive than it was ten years ago, so insurance
| companies are paying out more. If most cars are $250k
| Waymo cars, and you hit one...and you are at fault, ouch.
| And we will know if it is your fault or not since the
| Waymo is constantly recording.
|
| > If half of human drivers switched to self-driving cars
| but they were chosen completely at random then the
| insurance rates for the remaining drivers would be
| essentially unaffected.
|
| That's not how the math works out (smaller risk pools are
| more expensive per person period). And it won't be people
| switching at random to self driving cars (the ones not
| switching will be the ones that are more likely to have
| accidents).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Only .61% of car crashes involve fatalities, so that's
| like .2% of car crashes you are referring to. Probably
| more due to alcohol, but we don't know the ratio of
| accidents that involve alcohol, which would be more
| telling.
|
| Fatalities get more thoroughly investigated so we have
| better numbers on them, but if you had to guess whether
| the people who get behind the wheel drunk were similarly
| disproportionately likely to bang up their cars in a non-
| fatal way, what would your guess be?
|
| > Boomers are already the primary anti-EV demographic,
| with the complaint that real cars have engines.
|
| EVs and self-driving are two different things. Fox News
| tells boomers that EVs are bad because Republicans have
| the oil companies as a constituency.
|
| > It doesn't matter if they know your age of state laws
| keep them from acting on it.
|
| The only states that do that are Hawaii and
| Massachusetts.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/select/best-car-insurance-
| seniors/
|
| > If most cars are $250k Waymo cars, and you hit
| one...and you are at fault, ouch. And we will know if it
| is your fault or not since the Waymo is constantly
| recording.
|
| If X% of cars are Waymos and you hit another car in your
| normally priced car and you're at fault, there is an X%
| chance it will be expensive. If the Waymo hits another
| car and it's at fault, there is a 100% chance it will be
| expensive because it will damage itself, and an
| additional X% chance that it will be _very_ expensive
| because both cars are.
|
| And again, that's assuming the price stays as high as it
| is when the production volume increases. A $250,000 car
| _can 't_ become the majority of cars because that
| percentage of people can't afford that.
|
| > That's not how the math works out (smaller risk pools
| are more expensive per person period).
|
| Smaller risk pools don't have _higher risk_ , they have
| _higher volatility_ , and then if they're too small
| insurers have to charge a volatility premium. But the
| auto insurance market is _very_ large and for it to get
| to the size that it would have volatility issues it would
| have to be a consequence rather than a cause of the large
| majority of people switching to self-driving cars.
|
| > And it won't be people switching at random to self
| driving cars (the ones not switching will be the ones
| that are more likely to have accidents).
|
| You keep saying that but it's still not obvious that it's
| what would happen, and in any event the ones more likely
| to have accidents are _already_ the ones paying higher
| insurance premiums -- which is precisely a reason they
| would have the incentive to be the first to switch to
| self-driving cars.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| Classic car insurance is dirt cheap, even for daily
| driven stuff. Removing people who don't want to drive and
| don't care to not suck at it hugely improves the risk
| pool.
|
| If there's only a small minority of human drivers people
| like you will have bigger fish to screech about there
| will be substantially less political will to perpetuate
| the system and it'll probably go away in favor of a far
| simpler and cheaper "post up a bond" type thing and much
| of the expensive mechanisms for grading drivers will be
| dismantled.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If it autonomous or self-driving then why is the person in
| the car paying for the insurance? Surely if it's Tesla making
| the decisions, they need the insurance?
|
| Suppose ACME Corporation produces millions of self-driving cars
| and then goes out of business because the CEO was embezzling.
| They no longer exist. But the cars do. They work fine. Who
| insures them? The person who wants to keep operating them.
|
| Which is the same as it is now. It's your car so you pay to
| insure it.
|
| I mean think about it. If you buy an autonomous car, would the
| manufacturer have to keep paying to insure it _forever_ as long
| as you can keep it on the road? The only real options for
| making the manufacturer carry the insurance are that the answer
| is no and then they turn off your car after e.g. 10 years,
| which is quite objectionable, or that the answer is "yes" but
| then you have to pay a "subscription fee" to the manufacturer
| which is really the insurance premium, which is also quite
| objectionable because then you're then locked into the OEM
| instead of having a competitive insurance market.
| stubish wrote:
| Risk gets passed along until someone accepts it, usually an
| insurance company or the operator. If the risk was accepted and
| paid for by Tesla, then the cost would simply be passed down to
| consumers. All consumers, including those that want to accept
| the risk themselves. In particular, if you have a fleet of cars
| it can be cheaper to accept the risk and only pay for mandatory
| insurance, because not all of your cars are going to crash at
| the same time, and even if they did, not all in the worst way
| possible. This is how insurance _works_ , by amortizing lots of
| risk to make it highly improbable to make a loss in the long
| run.
| ponector wrote:
| Why ship owner is paying for the insurance while it's a captain
| making all decisions?
| zugi wrote:
| If your minor child breaks something, or your pet bites
| someone, you are liable.
|
| This analogy may be more apt than Tesla would like to admit,
| but from a liability perspective it makes sense.
|
| You could in turn try to sue Tesla for defective FSD, but the
| now-clearly-advertised "(supervised)" caveat, plus the lengthy
| agreement you clicked through, plus lots of lawyers, makes you
| unlikely to win.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Can a third party reprogram my dog or child at any moment? Or
| even take over and control them?
| cebert wrote:
| I own a Model Y with hardware version 4. FSD prevented my from
| getting in an accident with a drunk driver. It reacted much
| faster to the situation than I could have. Ever since, I'm sold
| that in a lot of circumstances, machines can drive better than
| humans.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| So does AEB in any modern car.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| Tesla fans have not realized that every car made since
| 2021ish can do this.
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Obviously.
| mullingitover wrote:
| My 2016 Honda Civic has automatic braking ( _and_ it has
| lanekeep assist, so it 's technologically superior to a
| 2026 Tesla).
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It does more than AEB. It also knows to swerve out of the
| way during E: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1MWml-81e0
| throw20251220 wrote:
| Generally known as AES, for example from BMW available
| with Active Driving Assistant or Driving Assistant Plus
| packages.
| tevon wrote:
| I have a late model Audi, and a Tesla Model 3. Audi has
| all the bells and whistles.
|
| Doesn't come close to the safety I feel in the Tesla. Not
| even close. I know anecdotal
| servo_sausage wrote:
| Design of these safety features for euro cars generally
| aims to be invisible unless active. You don't "feel" the
| car in control.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| then the PR worked
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| AEB has been around since ages. Even my 2010 Mazda had it.
| It's nowhere near Tesla's capabilities tho. Not sure what
| are you trying to achieve with such dunks?
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| About once a month my car makes me look like a piece of
| shit because the AEB gets confused by lane changes when you
| maintain speed coming up to slow traffic in order to wait
| for a good spot to move over. As you go to move over it'll
| flip out and brake as you slide left and no amount of gas
| pedal will override it so you wind up moving over a lane
| only to brake check that lane. Thankfully it doesn't do a
| full stop, just brakes for long enough to realize there's
| nothing there.
|
| 0/10. Someone is gonna cause a multi-car pile up with this.
|
| I'm sure it would work great to prevent me from texting my
| way into the back of stopped traffic though.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| A 50% discount is pretty damning empirical evidence for FSD being
| better at driving your Tesla than you are.
| jerlam wrote:
| We don't know if 50% makes it actually cheaper than other car
| insurance companies, or the coverage is comparable, or if they
| have comparable service. Or if they sell your location
| information to marketers.
| dangus wrote:
| Or a price hike if the fleet API tattles on you for negative
| driving behaviors.
|
| It may not be on the marketing copy but it's almost certainly
| present in the contract.
| _diyar wrote:
| Assuming this discount is offered broadly and indefinitely.
| Otherwise these might just be marketing dollars.
| Veserv wrote:
| No it does not. A 50% discount and the insurance still having
| industry average profit, or at least being profitable at all,
| would tell you that. Selling at a loss does not indicate your
| costs are actually lower. You need to wait until we learn if it
| is actually at a loss.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Sir, your bias is extreme.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Veserv
| Veserv wrote:
| Ah yes, posting well documented video evidence of reality
| is bias. How silly of me. The only unbiased take is to
| ignore my lying eyes and make logically unsound arguments
| in favor of endangering the public. That is what unbiased
| people do.
|
| I also like how you completely avoided addressing my
| argument in favor of a attempted ad hominem.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| > ignore my lying eyes and make logically unsound
| arguments
|
| Why haven't you acknowledged this video as fake?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu2N8f3nEYc
| Veserv wrote:
| I am utterly baffled by what you are trying to argue with
| this post except for distracting from the weakness of
| your original argument with more attempted(?) ad
| hominems. Must be my bias showing.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Uh huh
| recursive wrote:
| I will sell you a loaf of bread for $10 and a tortilla for
| $100.
|
| Analysts saying tortilla industry in shambles.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yeah I'm actually very curious about this, it's the first I've
| heard.
|
| I'd like to know what data this is based on, and if Tesla is
| providing any kind of subsidy or guarantee.
|
| There's also a big difference between the value of car damages
| and, well, death. E.g. what if FSD is much less likely to get
| into otherwise common fender benders that don't harm you, but
| more likely to occasionally accidentally drive you straight
| into a divider, killing you?
| gwern wrote:
| A discount they get to set on a subset of miles of their choice
| may just be a marketing expense for an insurance startup which
| makes losses and relies on VC capital and needs growth:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemonade,_Inc.#2015%E2%80%9320...
| I was impressed by this until I looked Lemonade up.
| stubish wrote:
| A 50% discount when using FSD or just doubling insurance
| company profits when when not using FSD. The only evidence that
| actually matters is cost in comparison to other insurance
| companies. If this product is cheaper _for you_ , then it
| probably does indicate FSD is better at driving _than you_
| (well, than the average driver in your demographic). Maybe this
| is damning with faint praise.
| estearum wrote:
| I'm sure from an underwriting perspective, they could also
| offer a significant discount for miles driven with LKAS turned
| on for the same reason they can do it for FSD: you only do it
| in certain (lower risk) conditions.
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| Oh, you've totally forgotten about selling to third parties and
| making tons of money off of what you do and where you go.
| t1234s wrote:
| What happens if you have FSD turned off and like to drive fast on
| public roads. Will they see this telemetry and raise your rates?
| jerlam wrote:
| It seems the answer is yes. From their web site:
|
| > Fair prices, based on how you drive [...] Get a discount, and
| earn a lower premium as you drive better.
| t1234s wrote:
| Bummer.. its super fun to floor them off the line.
| giobox wrote:
| This (instant torque) is exciting for about the first week
| of electric car ownership, it gets old very fast. I have
| far more fun driving my much slower gas-engined cars.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| It doesn't get old. What a ludicrous statement.
|
| I did get lots of traction issues with FWD EV, any sort
| of wet - you need to baby it.
| giobox wrote:
| There's much more to enjoying cars than speed in a
| straight line, which I do not disagree at all most EVs
| are exceptional at.
|
| Booting the go pedal at every stop sign or light just
| feels like being a bit of a childish jerk after a short
| while on public roads once the novelty wears off.
| darkwater wrote:
| Speak for yourself. Over 3 years and 100k km and still
| enjoying it.
| t1234s wrote:
| MT gas cars are very fun to drive!
| t1234s wrote:
| Someone with a Plaid will need to test this out to see how
| high they can make their Lemonade premium.
| xnx wrote:
| Marketing stunt
| rebelde wrote:
| 99/month is more than I have been willing to pay for FSD, but if
| it lowers my insurance by 200/month, I could be convinced.
| vel0city wrote:
| Lowering by $200? Full coverage on two recent model cars here
| and that's nearly three quarters of my monthly insurance bill.
| Insane what people are paying for insurance these days.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > automatically tracking FSD miles versus manual miles through
| direct Tesla integration.
|
| No thanks. I unplugged the cellular modem in my car precisely
| because I can't stand the idea that the
| manufacturer/dealer/insurance company or other unauthorized third
| parties could have access to my location and driving habits.
|
| I also generally avoid dealers like the plague and only trust the
| kind of shops where the guy who answers the phone is the guy
| doing the work.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| And yet you have a phone on you, probably using its navigation
| too. You're totally right so much safer to trust Google/Apple
| with your location and driving habits
| hamdingers wrote:
| The whole point of self-driving cars (to me) is I don't have to
| own or insure it, someone else deals with that and I just make it
| show up with my phone when I need it.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| Imagine this for a whole neighborhood! Maybe it'd be more
| efficient for the transport to come at regular intervals
| though. And while we're at it, let's pick up other people along
| the way, you'll need a bigger vehicle though, perhaps bus-
| sized...
|
| Half-jokes aside, if you don't own it, you'll end up paying
| more to the robotaxi company than you would have paid to own
| the car. This is all but guaranteed based on all SaaS services
| so far.
| Sayrus wrote:
| Focusing only on price, renting a beafy shared "cloud"
| computer is cheaper than buying one and changing every 5
| years. It's not always an issue for idle hardware.
|
| Cars are mostly idle and _could_ be cheaper if shared. But
| why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the
| price and extract more profits?
| theLiminator wrote:
| > Cars are mostly idle and could be cheaper if shared. But
| why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the
| price and extract more profits?
|
| Yeah, this would rely on robust competition.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cars and personal computers have advantages over shared
| resources that often make them worth the cost. If you want
| your transport/compute in busy times you may find
| limitations. (ever got on the train and had to stand
| because there are no seats? Every had to wait for your
| compute job to start because they are all busy? Both of
| these have happened to me).
| cyberax wrote:
| I ran the numbers, and for most non-braindead cities
| something like a fleet of 6-seater minivans will easily
| replace all of local transit.
|
| And with just 6 people the overhead if an imperfect route
| and additional stops will be measured in minutes.
|
| And of course, it's pretty easy to imagine an option to
| pay a bit more for a fully personal route.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| This exists in a way -- I'd wager every city has a
| commercial service that will shuttle you to, say, the
| airport. They're not cheap, however.
| cyberax wrote:
| Yep. And it's indeed a good model for this mode of
| transportation. And they ARE cheap.
|
| For example, in Seattle I can get a shared airport
| shuttle for $40 with the pick-up/drop-off at my front
| door. And this is a fully private ADA-compliant
| commercial service, with a healthy profit margin, not a
| rideshare that offloads vehicle costs onto the driver.
| And a self-driving van can be even cheaper than that,
| since it doesn't need a driver.
|
| Meanwhile, transit also costs around $40 per trip and
| takes at least 1 hour more. And before you tell me: "no
| way, the transit ticket is only $2.5", the TRUE cost of a
| transit ride in Seattle is more than $20. It's just that
| we're subsidizing most of it.
|
| So you can see why transit unions are worrying about
| self-driving. It'll kill transit completely.
| bluGill wrote:
| you made too many false assumptions if you came up with
| those routes. Experts have run real numbers including
| looking at what happens in the real world.
| https://humantransit.org/category/microtransit - (as I
| write this you need to scroll to the second article to
| find the useful rebuttal of your idea)
| cyberax wrote:
| Yeah, yeah: "Major US Public Transit Union Questions
| "Microtransit"" Read it. Go on. It's pure bullshit.
|
| The _only_ issue with the old "microtransit" is the
| _driver_. Each van ends up needing on average MORE
| drivers than it moves passengers. It does solve the
| problem of throughput, though.
|
| But once the driver is removed, this problem flips on its
| head. Each regular bus needs around 4 drivers for decent
| coverage. It's OK-ish only when the average bus load is
| at least 15-20 people. It's still much more expensive and
| polluting than cars, but not crazily so.
| bluGill wrote:
| Scroll down to the other articles as I said in the first
| place.
|
| self driving changes some things, but there are a lot of
| other points in the many article linked from there that
| don't change.
| cyberax wrote:
| This article is just a bunch of propaganda. You can tell
| that by the picture with people in the shape of a bus
| next to the line of cars. Every time you see it, you can
| immediately blacklist the author and ignore whatever they
| are saying about cars.
|
| Can you guess why?
|
| Hint: think about the intervals between buses and how you
| should represent them to stay truthful. And that buses
| necessarily move slower than cars. And that passengers
| will waste some time due to non-optimal routes and
| transfers. And that passengers will waste some time
| because they need to walk to the station.
|
| So back to my point, can you tell me EXACTLY what I
| should read in that article? Point out the paragraph,
| please.
| brookst wrote:
| > But why make them significantly cheaper when you can
| match the price and extract more profits?
|
| Even better -- charge 10% less and corner the market! As
| long as nobody charges 10% less than you...
| nradov wrote:
| Nah, I don't want to share my car with anyone. It's my own
| personal space where I can keep some of my stuff and set it
| up exactly the way I want.
| recursive wrote:
| That's how some people feel about airplanes. Presumably
| you're not one of them. For some people, the
| inconvenience of being responsible for a car would
| outweigh the benefit of setting up their stuff inside of
| one.
| nradov wrote:
| It's not even an inconvenience. I like my cars. Dealing
| with ride hailing services (autonomous or not) is
| certainly far more inconvenient than owning a car (unless
| maybe you're stuck living somewhere without convenient
| parking).
| dfabulich wrote:
| Self-driving municipal busses would be fantastic.
| nine_k wrote:
| Also, a real nightmare for the municipal trade unions. (Do
| you know why every NYC subway train needs to have not one
| but two operators, even though it could run automatically
| just fine?)
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Why?
| nine_k wrote:
| Because the Transport Workers Union fought tooth and nail
| for it. Laying off hundreds of operators would be a
| politically very dangerous move.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Huh. I wonder if that makes any sense. It doesn't seem to
| make sense to keep employing people if you no longer need
| them. It sucks to be layed off, but that's just how it
| works.
| supertrope wrote:
| It also shows a lack of imagination. If you have to
| provide a union with a job bank, why not re-deploy
| employees to other roles? With one person per train, re-
| deploy people to run more trains therefore decreasing the
| interval between trains. Stations used to have medics but
| this was cut. How about re-train people to be those
| medics? The subway could use a signaling upgrade and
| positive train control. Installing platform screen doors
| to greatly reduce the incidence of people falling onto
| the tracks is going to need a lot of labor.
| cyberax wrote:
| Why would you need buses?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Believe it or not, in some cities that have near grid-
| lock rush-hour traffic - there's between 50-100%+ as many
| people traveling by bus as by car.
|
| If all of those people switch to cars, you end up with it
| taking an hour to travel 1 mile by car.
|
| It's almost as if they have busses for a reason.
| cyberax wrote:
| First, these cities should be fixed by removing the
| traffic magnets. It's far past the point where we used
| the old obsolete ideology of trying to supply as much
| traffic capacity as possible.
|
| But anyway, your statement is actually not true anywhere
| in the US except NYC. Even in Chicago, removing ALL the
| local transit and switching to 6-seater minivans will
| eliminate all the traffic issues.
| dfabulich wrote:
| 6-seater self-driving municipal minivans would be
| fantastic, too. (I would still call that a "bus", but I
| don't care what we call it.)
| supertrope wrote:
| Car traffic magnets like highways inside urban cores? Or
| people traffic magnets like office buildings, colleges,
| sports stadiums, performing arts venues, shopping malls?
| cyberax wrote:
| Office buildings. Everything else is just noise.
|
| Large stadium arenas are a special case, but they don't
| create sustained traffic, and their usage periods
| typically do not overlap with the regular rush hour.
| toast0 wrote:
| > First, these cities should be fixed by removing the
| traffic magnets.
|
| If you remove the jobs and housing, traffic does get a
| lot better. But it's not much of a city without jobs and
| housing.
| cyberax wrote:
| Indeed. And people live better lives, with better job
| accessibility and variety. Once you remove dense office
| cores.
| supertrope wrote:
| Mass transit is a capacity multiplier. If 35 people are
| headed in the same direction compare that with the
| infrastructure needed to handle 35 cars. Road capacity,
| parking capacity, car dealerships, gas stations, repair
| shops, insurance, car loans.
| nine_k wrote:
| This only works in neighborhoods that are veritable city
| blocks, with buildings several stories tall standing close
| by. Not something like northern Houston, TX; it barely works
| for places like Palo Alto, CA. You cannot run buses on every
| lane, at a reasonable distance from every house.
|
| The point of a car is takes you _door to door_. There 's no
| expectation to walk three blocks from a stop; many US places
| are not intended for waking anyway. Consider heavy bags from
| grocery shopping, or similar.
|
| Public transit works in proper cities, those that became
| cities before the advent of the car, and were not kept in the
| shape of large suburban sprawls by zoning. Most US cities
| only qualify in their downtowns.
|
| Elsewhere, rented / hailed self-driving cars would be best.
| First of all, fewer of them would be needed.
| boredatoms wrote:
| > Maybe it'd be more efficient for the transport to come at
| regular intervals though
|
| Efficient for who, is the problem
| hamdingers wrote:
| > if you don't own it, you'll end up paying more to the
| robotaxi company than you would have paid to own the car
|
| Maybe for you, I already don't own it and have not found that
| to be true. I pretty much order an uber whenever I don't feel
| like riding my bike or the bus, and that costs <$300 most
| months. Less than the average used car payment in the US
| before you even consider insurance, fuel, storage,
| maintenance, etc.
|
| I also rent a car now and then for weekend trips, that also
| is a few hundred bucks at most.
|
| I would be surprised if robotaxis were more expensive long
| term.
| Larrikin wrote:
| This is the nightmare scenario for me. A forever subscription
| for the usage of a car.
|
| Subscription for self driving will almost be a given with so
| many bad actors in tech nowadays, but never even being allowed
| to own the car is even worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| Subscription for changes to maps and the law makes sense. I'd
| also pay for the latest safety improvements (but they better
| be real improvements). However they are likely to add a
| number of unrelated things and I object to those.
| jtbayly wrote:
| How do maps changes make sense to subscribe to when they
| are on OSM?
|
| And what do you even mean by subscription to changes to the
| law?
| bluGill wrote:
| If OSM is up to date - many places it is very outdated.
| (others it is very good).
|
| Law - when a government changes the driving laws.
| Government can be federal (I have driven to both Canada
| and Mexico. Getting to Argentina is possible though I
| don't think it has ever been safe. Likewise it is
| possible to drive over the North Pole to Europe), state
| (or whatever the country calls their equivalent). When a
| city changes the law they put up signs, but if a state
| passes a law I'm expected to know even if I have never
| driven in that state before. Right turn on red laws are
| the only ones I can think of where states are different -
| but they are likely others.
|
| Laws also cover new traffic control systems that may not
| have been in the original program. If the self driving
| system can't figure out the next one (think roundabout)
| then it needs to be updated.
| dddgghhbbfblk wrote:
| I think this is purely psychological. The notion of paying
| for usage of some resource that you don't own is really
| rather mundane when you get down to it.
| Larrikin wrote:
| One mean tweet and your self driving subscription is taken
| away is way better than one mean tweet and your car is
| taken away.
| bluGill wrote:
| For the vast majority of people who own a car, continuing to
| own the car will remain the better deal. Most people need their
| car during "rush hour", so there isn't any savings from
| sharing, and worse some people have "high standards" and so
| will demand the rental be a clean car nicer than you would
| accept - thus raising the costs (particularly if you drive used
| cars) Any remaining argument for a shared car dies when you
| realize that you can leave your things in the car, and you
| never have to wait.
|
| For the rest - many of them live in a place where not enough
| others will follow the same system and so they will be forced
| to own a car just like today. If you live in a not dense area
| but still manage to walk/bike almost everywhere (as I do),
| renting a car is on paper cheaper the few times when you need a
| car - but in practice you don't know about that need several
| weeks in advance and so they don't have one they can rent to
| you. Even if you know you will need the car weeks in advance,
| sometimes they don't have one when you arrive.
|
| If you live in a very dense area such that you almost regularly
| use transit (but sometimes walk, bike), but need a car for
| something a few times per year, then not owning a car makes
| sense. In this case the density means shared cars can be a
| viable business model despite not being used very much.
|
| In short what you say sound insightful, but reality of how cars
| are used means it won't happen for most car owners.
| jtbayly wrote:
| > sometimes they don't have one when you arrive.
|
| Or, if they are Hertz, they might have one but refuse to give
| it to you. This happened to my wife. In spite of payment
| already being made to Hertz corporate online, the local agent
| wouldn't give up a car for a one-way rental. Hertz corporate
| was less than useless, telling us their system said was a car
| available, and suggesting we pay them hundreds of dollars
| _again_ and go pick it up. When I asked the woman from
| corporate whether she could actually guarantee we would be
| given a car, she said she couldn 't. When I suggested she
| call the local agent, she said she had no way to call the
| local office. Unbelievable.
|
| Since it was last minute, there were... as you said, no cars
| available at any of the other rental companies. So we had to
| drive 8 hours to pick her up. Then 8 hours back, which was
| the drive she was going to make in the rental car in the
| first place.
|
| Hertz will hurts you.
| bluGill wrote:
| Hertz this time, but things like that have happened with
| every rental company I know of.
| Matheus28 wrote:
| I personally would have changed it to a round-trip then
| just returned the car to the other Hertz location and let
| them figure it out.
| starik36 wrote:
| I think part of the issue in California at least is that you
| must have insurance. You gonna get a giant fine if you don't.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's the point of self-driving _fleets_. Or maybe a special
| category of leased vehicles.
|
| This is about a self-driving car _you own_.
| FlyingBears wrote:
| Lemonade purchased Metromile and significantly increased prices.
| 2.5x if I recall correctly. This has forced me to move to Geico.
| Now, since prices have increased and new self driving car
| insurance is giving a discount, are you effectively paying same
| old rate?
| redanddead wrote:
| Just curious about this, this was Lemonade's integrated
| insurance to the Tesla right? How's Geico like for you?
| Probably just fine right? Any differences?
| aanet wrote:
| It would be interesting to see if Lemonade requires a Driver
| Monitoring System (DMS) to see if the driver/operator is actually
| paying attention (or, like sleeping / watching Netflix /
| whatever) while at the driver's seat.
|
| Anybody know??
|
| Tesla FSD is still a _supervised_ system (= ADAS), afaik.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| FSD won't stay engaged for very long if you're not paying
| attention. It's getting pretty smart about how much attention
| it wants you to pay in different situations, but there are no
| situations where it will let you just sleep.
| sktb wrote:
| Hmmm. The source for the "FSD is safer" claim might not be wholly
| independent: "Tesla's data shows that Full Self-Driving miles are
| twice as safe as manual driving"
| gizmo686 wrote:
| I would be surprised if that was what they were actually
| looking at. They are an established insurance company with
| their own data and the actuaries to analyze it. I can't imagine
| them doing this without at least validating a substantial drop
| in claims relating to FSD capable cars.
|
| Now that they are offering this program, they should start
| getting much better data by being able to correlate claims with
| actual FSD usage. They might be viewing this program partially
| as a data acquisition project to help them insure autonomous
| vehicles more broadly in the future.
| Veserv wrote:
| They are a grossly unprofitable insurance company. Your
| actuaries can undervalue risk to the point you are losing
| money on every claim and still achieve that.
|
| In fact, Tesla Insurance, the people who already have direct
| access to the data already loses money on every claim [1].
|
| [1] https://peakd.com/tesla/@newageinv/teslas-push-into-
| insuranc...
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Tesla expanding into insurance actuarial science, isn't it
| a conflict of interest if they offer it for their own cars?
| redanddead wrote:
| > They might be viewing this program partially as a data
| acquisition project to help them insure autonomous vehicles
| more broadly in the future
|
| What do you mean?
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > "Tesla's data shows that Full Self-Driving miles are twice as
| safe as manual driving"
|
| Teslas only do FSD on motorways where you tend to have far
| fewer accidents per mile.
|
| Also, they switch to manual driving if they can't cope, and
| because the driver isn't paying attention this usually results
| in a crash. But hey, it's in manual driving, not FSD, so they
| get to claim FSD is safer.
|
| FSD is not and never will be safer than a human driver.
| Onavo wrote:
| > _Teslas only do FSD on motorways where you tend to have far
| fewer accidents per mile._
|
| They have been end to end street level for the past two
| years.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Not successfully.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Successful enough for me and many other people I know.
| End to end from my house to grocery store, kids schools,
| friends houses, etc. Multiple times per day for the past
| year.
|
| It's not perfect but I'd consider it a smashing success
| for something I rely on for safely transporting my family
| every day.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| I wouldn't feel safe in one. I've seen how they drive,
| and I've had a brief shot of a car with FSD.
|
| They are not safe and they will never be safe.
| mavhc wrote:
| If they're not safe then why does the data show they're
| safer than humans?
|
| Why will they never be safe?
|
| Also can you define safe?
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| > They are not safe
|
| Debatable, but you won't be convinced.
|
| > they will never be safe.
|
| Define safe? Would be interested to see you provide a
| benchmark that is reasonable, and lock it in now so we
| can see if this statement is falsified in the future.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Wrong in every count. You're embarrassing yourself. Your
| identity is so tied up in this haha. Yes, it's safer, no its
| not just freeways, and crashes after disengagements still
| count.
| ex-aws-dude wrote:
| It doesn't really matter because the insurance company itself
| will learn if that is correct or not when the claims start
| coming in
|
| Its their own bet to make
| cs702 wrote:
| TL;DR: 50% insurance discount for Tesla vehicles driven by Tesla
| FSD.
|
| On the surface, this looks like an endorsement of Tesla's claims
| about FSD safety.
| recursive wrote:
| Assuming the non-discounted rates are market-competitive.
| notahacker wrote:
| And that the sort of miles accrued when using FSD in Arizona
| aren't >50% less likely to result in a claim than the average
| mile driven regardless of who's driving
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Fleet API gives location data, no? I bet this discount will be
| paid for by this location data
| kittikitti wrote:
| I have Lemonade for my home insurance. It's been reliable for
| several years and the customer service is great. I don't have a
| self-driving car but I wouldn't hesitate to sign up. Their rates
| are very affordable.
| ajcp wrote:
| I've had their Home Insurance since they started up and grabbed
| their car insurance a couple years ago. Competitive price,
| excellent customer service, no notes.
| culopatin wrote:
| Have you cashed a claim from them?
| thewillowcat wrote:
| You're telling me this car insurance drives itself?
| philip1209 wrote:
| I was curious what the break-even is where the insurance discount
| covers the $99/mo FSD subscription. I got a Lemonade quote around
| $240/mo (12k mi/yr lease on a Model 3), so 50% off would save
| ~$120/mo - i.e. it would cover FSD and still leave ~$21/mo net.
| Or, "free FSD is you use it".
|
| I believe, at the end of the day, insurance companies will be the
| ones driving FSD adoption. The media will sensationalize the
| outlier issues of FSD software, but insurance companies will set
| the incentives for humans to stop driving.
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| Yep - the way to get adoption, whilst the bar is too high for
| self-driving cars, the bar should be safer than the average
| person. An old greying socialist - saying that capitalism drive
| the right outcomes. Same with low-carbon, insurance will help
| with climate change mitigation.
| IshKebab wrote:
| $240 per _month_? That 's literally eight times what I pay in
| the UK. Ok I don't have a fancy electric car but still... what.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _$240 per month?_
|
| Are Teslas still ridiculously-expensive to repair? (I pay
| $1,100 a year (~$92/month) to insure my Subaru, which costs
| more than a Model 3.)
| bradleyjg wrote:
| We have contingency fee personal injury lawyers and you have
| loser pays. Your system works better.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yep, also people who will spend thousands of dollars to get
| a tiny scratch repaired because for some reaosn in the US
| everyone expects cars to be utterly perfect.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I don't have a car so I don't know what is normal. i just
| went through the lemonade quote process. (I have a license
| and my record is clean, though - so there shouldn't be any
| high-risk flags.)
| microtherion wrote:
| I'm quite skeptical of Tesla's reliability claims. But for
| exactly that reason, I welcome a company like Lemonade betting
| actual money on those claims. Either way, this is bound to
| generate some visibility into the actual accident rates.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _quite skeptical of Tesla 's reliability claims_
|
| I'm sceptical of Robotaxi/Cybercab. I'm less sceptical that
| FSD, supervised, is safer than fully-manual control.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| this ^^
| madsmith wrote:
| Having handed over control of my vehicles to FSD many times,
| I've yet to come away from the experience feeling that my
| vehicle was operating in a safer regime for the general
| public than within my own control.
| Rover222 wrote:
| I think you greatly overestimate humans
| ihaveajob wrote:
| The problem IMO is the transition period. A mostly safe
| system will make the driver feel at ease, but when an
| emergency occurs and the driver must take over, it's
| likely that they won't be paying full attention.
| Retric wrote:
| We aren't talking about the average human here.
|
| On average you include sleep deprived people, driving way
| over the speed limit, at night, in bad weather, while
| drunk, and talking to someone. FSD is very likely
| situationally useful.
|
| But you can know most of those adverse conditions don't
| apply when you engage FSD on a given trip. As such the
| standard needs to be extremely high to avoid increased
| risks when you're sober, wide awake, the conditions are
| good, and you have no need to speed.
| izacus wrote:
| > On average you include sleep deprived people, driving
| way over the speed limit, at night, in bad weather, while
| drunk, and talking to someone. FSD is very likely
| situationally useful.
|
| Are those people also able to suprevise FSD like the law
| and Tesla expects them to? That's also a question.
| fragmede wrote:
| FSD will pull over and stop if it detects the driver has
| passed out. Can the law do that automatically?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you greatly overestimate humans_
|
| Tesla's FSD still goes full-throttle dumbfuck from time
| to time. Like, randomly deciding it wants to speed into
| an intersection despite the red light having done
| absolutely nothing. Or swerving because of glare that you
| can't see, and a Toyota Corolla could discern with its
| radars, but which hits the cameras and so fires up the
| orange cat it's simulating on its CPU.
| fragmede wrote:
| Yeah even corollas have better sensors than a Tesla for
| driving in fog. It's embarrassing.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Keeping a 1-2 car's length stopping distance is likely over
| a 50% reduction in at fault damages.
| panopticon wrote:
| Where I live isn't particularly challenging to drive (rural
| Washington), but I'm constantly disengaging FSD for doing
| silly and dangerous things.
|
| Most notably my driveway meets the road at a blind y
| intersection, and my Model 3 just blasts out into the road
| even though you cannot see cross traffic.
|
| FSD stresses me out. It's like I'm monitoring a teenager with
| their learners permit. I can probably count the number trips
| where I haven't had to take over on one hand.
| apearson wrote:
| Do you have HW3 or HW4?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The newest FSD on HW4 was very good in my opinion.
| Multiple 45min+ drives where I don't need to touch the
| controls.
|
| Still not paying $8k for it. Or $100 per month. Maybe $50
| per month.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's your sanity (and money) -\\_(tsu)_/-
| panopticon wrote:
| HW3, unfortunately. Missed the HW4 refresh by a couple of
| months.
| elif wrote:
| it's edging into the intersection to get a better view on
| the camera. it's further than you would normally pull out,
| but it will NOT pull into traffic.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| The software probably has a better idea of their car's
| dimensions than a human driver, so will be able to get a
| better view of traffic by pulling out at just the right
| distance.
| panopticon wrote:
| It's not edging; it enters the street going a consistent
| speed (usually >10mph) from my driveway. The area is
| heavily wooded, and I don't think it "sees" the cross
| direction until it's already in the road. Or perhaps the
| lack of signage or curb make it think it has the right of
| way.
|
| My neighbor joked that I should install a stop sign at
| the end of my driveway to make it safer.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| Or just manually drive in your own driveway.
|
| The fact that it does't handle some specific person's
| driveway well is far from a condemnation of the system.
| I'm far more concerned about it mishandling things on
| "proper" roads at speed.
| parpfish wrote:
| > I'm constantly disengaging FSD for doing silly and
| dangerous things.
|
| You meant "I disable FSD because it does silly things"
|
| I read "I disable FSD so I can do silly things"
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| Exactly. Every bad situation I've been in with FSD was
| when I misread the situation and disengaged it during a
| maneuver that it was handling safely
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| I use it for 90% of my driving in Austin and it's
| incredible
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| > I'm less sceptical that FSD, supervised, is safer than
| fully-manual control.
|
| I'm very skeptical that the average human driver properly
| supervises FSD or any other "full" self driving system.
| microtherion wrote:
| Supervised FSD -- automating 99.9% of driving and expecting
| drivers to be fully alert for the other .1% -- appears to
| go against everything we know about human attention.
| rubyfan wrote:
| Lemonade will have some actual claim data to support this
| already, not relying on the word of Tesla.
| sfblah wrote:
| One thing that was unclear to me from the stats cited on the
| website is whether the quoted 52% reduction in crashes is when
| FSD is in use, or overall. This matters because people are much
| more likely to use FSD in situations where driving is easier.
| So, if the reduction is just during those times, I'm not even
| sure that would be better than a human driver.
|
| As an example, let's say most people use FSD on straight US
| Interstate driving, which is very easy. That could artificially
| make FSD seem safer than it really is.
|
| My prior on this is supervised FSD ought to be safer, so the
| 52% number kind of surprised me, however it's computed. I would
| have expected more like a 90-95% reduction in accidents.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I think this might be right, but it does two interesting
| things:
|
| 1) it let's lemonade reward you for taking safer driving
| routes (or living in a safer area to drive, whatever that
| means)
|
| 2) it (for better or worse) encourages drivers to use it
| more. This will improve Tesla's training data but also might
| negatively impact the fsd safety record (an interesting
| experiment!)
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > ...but also might negatively impact the fsd safety record
| (an interesting experiment!)
|
| As a father of kids in a neighborhood with a lot of Teslas,
| how do I opt out of this experiment?
| almosthere wrote:
| https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/?searchQueryState=%
| 7B%...
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Do your kids randomly run into the road? I was worried
| about that but then mine just don't run into the road for
| some reason, they are quite careful about it seemingly by
| default after having "getting bumped into by a car"
| explained to them. I'm not sure if this is something
| people are just paranoid about because the consequences
| are so bad or if some kids really do just run out into
| the road randomly.
| wcrossbow wrote:
| Kids will randomly run into the road. They might run
| behind a ball or a dog so that it doesn't end up on the
| other side or runned over or are simply too excited to
| remember your stern road safety talk.
|
| The first thing I was taught when I picked up a car was:
| if you see a ball on the road you stop immediately. This
| valuable lesson has saved one kid (and my sanity) with me
| on the wheel.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Some kids really do just run into the road seemingly
| randomly. Other kids run in with a clear purpose, not at
| all randomly, and sometimes (perhaps very rarely, but it
| only takes once and bad luck) forget to look both ways.
| Kids are not cookie cutter copies that all behave the
| same way in the same circumstances (even with the same
| training).
| tbossanova wrote:
| Yes it does happen. Otherwise smart kids will do dumb
| stuff sometimes. Like see their friend across the road,
| but at that moment someone on a motorcycle is
| accelerating out of their driveway, kid runs across, dead
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I'm more worried about the Teslas hitting my kids when
| they're on bicycles or Teslas swerving off the road into
| the yards. Regardless, it sure would be nice if
| technology controlling multi-ton vehicles on public roads
| were subject to regulations, or at least had clearly
| define liability.
| fragmede wrote:
| Same way you opt out of having drunk drivers drive home
| along your street and pass out while driving, or drivers
| getting a stroke or other blood clot while driving and
| crashing into parked cars.
| benatkin wrote:
| > betting actual money on those claims
|
| Insurance companies can let marketing influence rates to some
| degree, with programs that tend to be tacked on after the
| initial rate is set. This self driving car program sounds an
| awful lot like safe driver programs like GEICO Clean Driving
| Record, State Farm Good Driver Discount, and Progressive Safe
| Driver, Progressive Snapshot, and Allstate Drivewise. The risk
| assessment seems to be less thorough than the general
| underwriting process, and to fall within some sort of risk
| margin, so to me it seems gimmicky and not a true innovation at
| this point.
| DaedalusII wrote:
| The insurance industry is a commercial prediction market.
|
| It is often an indicator of true honesty, providing there is no
| government intervention. Governments intervene in
| insurance/risk markets when they do not like the truth.
|
| I tried to arrange insurance for an obese western expatriate
| several years ago in an Asian country, and the (western)
| insurance company wrote a letter back saying the client was
| morbidly obese and statistically likely to die within 10 years,
| and they should lose x weight before they could consider having
| insurance.
| croddin wrote:
| I could see prediction markets handing insurance in the
| future, it could probably get fairer prices but would have to
| be done right to avoid bad incentives, interesting to think
| about how that might work.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| > providing there is no government intervention.
|
| You mean like forcing people to buy it ad then shaping what
| product can ad cant be offered with a spiderweb of complex
| rules?
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| They don't bet money on just "I'm quite skeptical because I
| hate the man", but on actual data provided by the company.
|
| That's the difference.
| microtherion wrote:
| The skepticism and hate is based on observing decades of
| shameless dishonesty, which is itself a form of data provided
| by the company: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| Still doesn't change my point: as of today being skeptic
| because relying on outdated data or historical series is
| just nonsense. I mean, insurance quotes work in a totally
| different way.
| thegreatpeter wrote:
| Do you drive a HW4? I'm 90% FSD on my total car miles
| justapassenger wrote:
| I'm 200% sure it's subsidized by Tesla and they have a deal that
| any losses they'd get Tesla is going to pay Lemonade for them.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Now all that's missing is a self-insuring car and we're set.
| cptaj wrote:
| So, here's a thought...
|
| If FSD is going to be a subscription and you will never own our
| fancy autopilot feature. Why should the user pay for insurance?
|
| The user is paying for a service that they do not control and
| which workings are completely opaque. How can responsibility ever
| lie with the user in such a situation?
| cesarvarela wrote:
| If you buy an autonomous killing robot and ask it to kill
| someone, who's responsible?
| jsight wrote:
| You know what's weird? This is a company that has been using the
| fleet api for quite a while now to monitor non-professional
| drivers using FSD on their daily commute, often while distracted
| doing other things. The latest versions even allow some phone
| usage.
|
| And yet people are skeptical. I mean, they should be skeptical,
| given that the company is using this for marketing purposes. It
| doesn't make sense to just believe them.
|
| But it is strange to see this healthy skepticism juxtaposed with
| the many unskeptical comments attached to recent Electrek
| articles with outlandish claims.
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| Yes, this is giving away everything about your vehicles driving
| to a third party for sale or, manufacture. I don't like this
| personally and I don't like it for my vehicle either. Where I go
| in my vehicle and when I do it is my business. With vehicles
| being IoT connected, we are forced to surrender that data as
| there is no opt-out except for disconnecting the antenna. Not to
| mention going in to be serviced what kind of data is pulled off.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I wish this was available in Miami! I would switch in a
| heartbeat.
| pcchristie wrote:
| Not directly related to the topic, I spose, but I have a Model 3,
| and absolutely love it, but the Smart Cruise Control/Driver
| Assist is, I hate to admit it, pretty annoying (I think it's
| gotten worse, too). It's incredibly "jumpy" and over-cautious. A
| car could pull out in your way 300m ahead of you, totally safely,
| and the car will shit itself and slam on the brakes to be over-
| cautious. Same thing with pedestrians who are walking alongside
| the road, posing no risk.
|
| It's so jarring at times that I'll often omit to use the Cruise
| Control if I have my wife in the car (so as not to give her car
| sickness) or other passengers (so as not to make them think I'm a
| terrible driver!).
|
| I now have developed a totally new skill which is to temporarily
| disengage it when I see a mistake incoming, then re-engaging it
| immediately after the moment passes.
|
| NB I am in Australia and don't have FSD so this is all just using
| Adaptive Cruise Control. Perhaps the much harder challenge of FSD
| (or near-FSD) is executed a lot better, but you wouldn't assume
| so.
| losvedir wrote:
| FSD is way beyond AutoPilot (the free Traffic Aware Cruise
| Control + Lane Keep). Autopilot uses an entirely different,
| hand coded system from several years ago, which they haven't
| updated at all. FSD is a Deep Learning neutral network based
| system.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Apologies for my novice question, does deep learning neural
| network give rise to hallucinated brakes and accelerations?
| iknowstuff wrote:
| No
| socalgal2 wrote:
| This is the biggest scam I can think of. You are not driving the
| car. If it crashes while its "self driving" the company that made
| the self driving system should be at fault. The End!
|
| Gees! Come on!
|
| PS: I'm not talking about Tesla's fake FSD.
| yencabulator wrote:
| And how much money will Lemonade make from tracking & selling
| your exact location?
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