Self Driving Car Insurance
(lemonade.com)142 points by KellyCriterion 2 days ago
142 points by KellyCriterion 2 days ago
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or even who was driving it, in the case of ordinary cars.
What is the "driver"? Who wrote which line of the software? Who tested it? Who approved its deployment? The rest is lawyers.
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.
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.
I wish this was available in Miami! I would switch in a heartbeat.
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.
> 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.
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
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
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?