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Originally Posted by speede5
Serious question, when your self driving car gets into an accident, because of a malfunction, does your insurance get jacked? I've been wondering about all these cars that park themselves. If one of them were to ding a car while you're sitting there with your hands off the wheel, is it an at fault accident on you?
I know that under our insurance, mechanical failures causing accidents have been put on the owner as they are the result of deficient maintenance.
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I'd imagine insurance rules completely change. Insurance being covered under the "leasing party" for instance (like a car2go system) probably would be the case for leased vehicles. I have no idea in regards to self owned cars. I could even imagine self driving cars would be set up to go receive maintenance on a regular basis from a dealer/manufacturer and your car might be completely replaced if an issue arises. (Other than sitting inside/usage, what other ways would a self driving car break down mechanically that's the fault of an owner?)
If anything, I could imagine a set up similar to Tesla where their car is basically a skateboard with batteries and a chassis tossed on top. You'd own your own "cockpit/chassis" which gets inserted into a "vehicle" they send over. Imagine getting to a location where parking is a removed locked cockpit you own. The rest of the vehicles just pick up other individuals and their cockpits and meander along. Similar in nature to you borrowing a shopping cart, but different. You'd need less cars manufactured, you'd save space and you'd have no headache of owning a stationary car. You would also reduce the empty space that most cars have (ie: 1/4 occupants) and could roll out 1/1 cars, or whatever size is necessary.
The future holds a lot of interesting crazy stuff.