A No Win: Self Driving Cars Promise Both Lower Risks And Higher Insurance Premiums

Like the newspaper business...the more customers they loose the more they charge. Not a good business building strategy...then again automobile insurance will be a dying business.

Long ago, when I was a kid, you could pay an "Uninsured Vehicle Fee" of $50 (to the government) to forgo insurance coverage on your car. Then insurance became mandatory, and guess what? Premiums skyrocketed. Why? Because they had more business and more revenue in the coffers? Hell no. Mandatory insurance meant that people had no choice but to buy your products and services, so the providers stopped competing for business, and in effect, undercutting each other, and got fat off the proceeds.

Today, the idea of a lean, aggressive insurance company that works hard to get your business and makes it easy for you to collect in the unfortunate event of an incident, is just plain laughable.

Actually - there is a lot of competition in the Auto Insurance industry - with the obvious result of almost continuous ads on TV. But you are correct about mandatory insurance eliminating low entry level policies.

I note that it takes about 3-4 years with a company before they start to really raise your rates - to a point that you can save enough again by switching.

Two points:
1. Insurance competition reduces rates. Mass. state controlled insurance with companies forced to insure high risk drivers at regular rates drove insurance costs sky high and left only 3 companies doing business here. The minute the state dropped its program, rates dropped and companies came back in. Very competitive now.

2. The mix between autonomous vehicles and human drivers during the changeover decades coming up are going to chaos. This afternoon on I-495 the left lane was moving at 75 to 80 mph as usual with drivers running up the tail of any car blocking the lane. Works every day as people know the game. The thought of an autonomous car driving at the posted 65 mph in that mix was frightening. Road rage anyone?

009 did you even read the article? NOWHERE does it state that premiums are going up? Was the original title not interesting enough?