By: Holden Benon
On June 15, 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released its initial summary reporting on autonomous vehicle crashes collected through its Standing General Order. According to the NHTSA, in the last year, there were 130 reported crashes involving vehicles with levels 3-5 automated-driving systems. Although NHTSA’s recent summary does not specify what caused these accidents, we might anticipate two eventualities going forward: the number of reported crashes may increase as autonomous vehicle technology becomes more widely adopted, and the question of whether crashes were caused by the driving system or the driver will increasingly be a factor in determining liability. Against this backdrop, one might wonder how personal auto insurance will evolve to meet these changes.
By way of background, road vehicles come with varying degrees of automation technology. To differentiate between these varying degrees, the Society of Automotive Engineers defined different levels: “level zero” refers to fully manual vehicles, while “level one” refers to cars with basic driving assistance features (e.g., adaptive cruise control) and “level two” refers to cars with more advanced driving features (think Tesla Autopilot). Meanwhile, levels three and four refer to “conditional driving automation” and “high” automation, respectively. Level five, the highest defined level of autonomy, refers to “full” automation, where no driver is needed at all.
This article focuses on personal auto insurance for owners of level four autonomous vehicles, i.e., vehicles equipped with artificial intelligence systems capable of performing all driving tasks, but which also permit the driver to take full control if necessary or if desired.