People are being rewarded for not having to think. We have short form video causing brain rot, AI removing some human creativity, and now cheaper insurance for letting cars do the work. Cars that can malfunction.
Zurich insurance recently announced they will discount insurance for owners of self-driving vehicles. In Australia, our laws prohibit fully autonomous cars. The driver must maintain control of the vehicle at all times. But, according to the National Transport Commission, we could begin to see fully autonomous vehicles on our roads as early as 2027.
Drivers who become dependent on self-driving technology can lose concentration. It’s known as automation complacency and can have serious consequences if the car makes a mistake on the road.
A Google search will bring up multiple videos of both self-driving and fully autonomous cars malfunctioning. There was a case in Texas of a Waymo fully autonomous car getting washed away because it drove onto a flooded road. Another was filmed driving through an active crime scene in Los Angeles. These are just two instances where fully autonomous cars did something an attentive human driver would not do.
There is cautious optimism about the safety of self-driving vehicles, but there’s no definitive proof that they don’t make mistakes. They do.
Henry Liu, Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, says that ninety-five percent of situations where accidents happen with fully autonomous vehicles are situations that are routine for humans. An RACV self-driving car review showed that unmarked roads, or unfamiliar road markings can cause the car to make mistakes. The reviewers also noted that self-driving mode doesn’t have the courtesy of a human driver. It is focussed on where it’s heading regardless of other cars wanting to enter a roadway.
It’s not only fully autonomous vehicles that fail. If a “driver” is distracted, looking at their phone, or even in deep thought about something, they won’t be alert to a vehicle’s mistake. Take a look at the video below to see how things can go wrong with self-driving vehicles even with drivers in control.
Looking at the video, I question what qualifies this technology for insurance discounts at this stage of development? It seems premature to me.
Bethany Miguel 
Tarkyn Sharples 
bella