Autonomous driving has brought various problems to car insurance, mainly reflected in the following aspects:
Complex responsibility determination
The attribution of responsibility varies for different levels of autonomous driving: for accidents related to Level 3 and above autonomous driving, the industry consensus is that the vehicle manufacturer should bear the responsibility; For accidents related to autonomous driving below L3 level, it is difficult to define the division of responsibility, and it is necessary to determine whether it is a technical issue or a driver issue. For example, in the stage of conditional autonomous driving (below L3 level), the driver may still need to take over the vehicle in certain situations. If the driver fails to respond to the takeover request in a timely manner and causes an accident, the division of responsibility needs to consider multiple factors comprehensively.
Involving multiple responsible parties: The division of insurance rights and responsibilities for autonomous vehicles involves multiple aspects, including not only vehicle manufacturers and drivers, but also software developers, system integrators, infrastructure providers, etc. For example, if the accident is caused by software failure or network attack, the software developer or related network security service provider may be held responsible.
Change in risk type
Technical failure risk: Autonomous vehicles are highly dependent on complex algorithms, high-precision sensors, control systems, etc. Although technology continues to advance, there is still a risk of software or hardware failure. For example, sensor malfunctions may cause the vehicle to be unable to accurately perceive the surrounding environment, or algorithm errors may lead to the vehicle making incorrect decisions.
Cybersecurity risks: Autonomous vehicles are at risk of being hacked, which could lead to security issues such as loss of control or data breaches. Once the control system of a vehicle is hacked, it may cause serious traffic accidents and cause huge losses to passengers and third parties.
Data security risks: Autonomous vehicles collect and process a large amount of user data, including location information, driving habits, etc. If this data is leaked or abused, it may pose privacy and security risks to users.
Difficulty in designing insurance products
New risks are difficult to cover: Existing insurance products still mainly rely on traditional car insurance products, which fail to cover the new risks faced by autonomous vehicles, resulting in insufficient protection for vehicles in certain scenarios. For example, the potential risks caused by software upgrades of autonomous vehicle systems, network security issues, and special accident liabilities due to autonomous driving functions have not yet been covered by traditional car insurance.
Lack of sufficient data to support pricing: Advanced autonomous driving intelligent connected vehicles are still in the development and testing stage, with limited underwriting and claims data, and new data needs to be supplemented in the pricing process of insurance products. Moreover, intelligent connected vehicles have added various hardware devices such as sensors, and the volume of test data is relatively large. However, the sources are redundant, the format is not unified, and the data is difficult to organize and convert, which is not conducive to insurance companies' risk pricing.
Transformation of Insurance Subject and Insurance Mode
Change of responsibility subject: Some pilot projects explicitly state that when autonomous driving is turned on, car insurance will first compensate. If there is no driver, the first person responsible is the manufacturer or operator. This means that the insured parties of insurance products will also undergo corresponding changes. In the future, car insurance may be more purchased by car companies, while car owners only need to purchase a limited range of insurance types; In autonomous driving mode, car owners do not need to bear insurance premiums.
Increased demand for cooperation mode: because the risk assessment and insurance product design of autonomous vehicle need to involve professional knowledge in many fields, insurance companies need to cooperate with autonomous vehicle enterprises, science and technology companies, scientific research institutions, etc. to jointly develop insurance products that adapt to the characteristics of autonomous vehicle. For example, insurance companies can collaborate with car companies to obtain technical data and operational information of vehicles in order to better assess risks; Collaborate with technology companies to improve the accuracy of risk assessment and pricing through technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence.
In order to deal with these problems, it is necessary to cooperate with the insurance industry, the automobile industry and government departments to jointly promote the development of autonomous vehicle insurance. For example, insurance institutions can build new risk assessment models, establish data sharing platforms, and cooperate with autonomous vehicle enterprises to innovate insurance products; The government departments can improve relevant laws, regulations and policy standards to provide institutional guarantee for autonomous vehicle insurance.