Autonomous Vehicles. Will society benefit from them?

The obstacles to autonomous vehicles: Liability, societal acceptance, and disaster stories | ZDNet

If you were to talk to a technology optimist about autonomous vehicles and self-driving cars, you'd probably hear about how revolutionary the technology is and how much it will disrupt markets around the world. And it's true: autonomous vehicles will revolutionize trucking and personal transportation, among other things.

From article, (It will take years, maybe decades, for driverless vehicles to reach widespread adoption. The technology behind these innovations is getting closer to achieving full autonomy every day, but the industry still faces obstacles in liability and societal acceptance, as well as negative consumer response to disaster stories.

 On the human driver level, shifts in insurance are the major concern. Koetzle said that insurers have told her the future will look the same as the current process: If your car is in an accident, the insurance company will pay the claim so you can get your car fixed. On the back end, they'll figure out whether it was a software, hardware, or another issue.

"In the short- to medium-term, you're not going to see any reduction in premium for the insurance customer for autonomous driving," Koetzle said, "because the cost of replacing components on a vehicle that drives autonomously is much higher than on one that doesn't."

But, as the cost of building autonomous vehicles comes down, eventually there will be "meaningful declines" in insurance costs, Koetzle said. Additionally, Koetzle said she believes that usage-based insurance will become one of the primary products offered by insurers.

General societal acceptance is a "big concern," Ramsey said, but it's also the easiest barrier to address -- and it doesn't have to be tackled immediately due to the predicted slow adoption of these vehicles. During the technology's initial phase, only early adopters will use it, but it will eventually make its way to other sectors of society.

Over time, as cars evolve from level 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 of autonomy, individuals will slowly come to accept driverless vehicles as a reality without any shock or awe, Renaud said. One day, he said, an Uber will show up to your house without a driver, but it won't come as a surprise, because the last few times the driver was just reading a book anyway, and was only there if something went wrong.

In the future, major cities with congestion areas might even mandate downtown areas as autonomous-only zones to help with traffic and safety, Renaud predicted. This will encourage others to follow suit, which will also help with adoption.)

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