Automotive Technology and Auto Insurance Implications

The automotive technology has been moving at much faster speed lately. It is good to see that most manufacturers are safety conscious and come up with great solutions to save lives by preventing crashes. Recently we hear about Google’s self-driving car and wonder when you can buy one of those. Wouldn’t it be great if you could reduce accidents and have your own chauffeur?

The self-driving automobiles aim to do just that. There may be too much excitement about it at the moment and tons of suggestions that it is only few years away. However, it will probably take a bit longer than that to have these vehicles on the road because the technology is too expensive at the moment and needs a lot more work. You can read more about [tp lang=”en” only=”y”]Google self-driving[/tp][tp not_in=”en”]Google self-driving[/tp] car on their own blog.

How Can Automobile Technology Reduce Accidents?

Actually, looking at statistical data shows that we are moving fast in the right direction, even without self-driving cars on the roads. Within the last ten years we have seen improvements on seat belts, airbags, antilock brakes and electronic stability control. They may sound unimpressive since we started the article with self-driving autos. However, those improvements have made a significant difference to injury rates in accidents.

You can see from the graph that injury rate per vehicle-mile dropped by more than fifty percent. This is clear evidence that safety improvements made by vehicle manufacturers save lives and reduce injuries.

How Can Reduced Accidents and Injuries Affect Auto Insurance Prices?

Simple workings of insurance policies is that policyholders pay their premiums in the expectation that insurers will pay for their damages should they suffer one. Therefore the main question would be how much premium you should be charged. Companies work hard on determining fair premiums based on statistical data. If the accidents and injuries are reduced you would expect to see [tp lang=”en” only=”y”]car insurance prices[/tp][tp not_in=”en”]car insurance prices[/tp] to go down. They have been stable and slightly going down for some time now.

Further improvements in the way automobiles are made will probably reduce insurance premiums in line with reduced claims and losses suffered. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that accidents do happen regardless of how great is cars or how well trained is drivers. That is why you will probably need to buy auto insurance for a long time yet.

How Automated Vehicles Are at the Moment?

You cannot probably seat back and let your car take you wherever you want yet. However, some new automobiles are already helping drivers in many ways. Some of those automations include automatic braking, adaptive cruise control and lane keeping technologies. Adaptive cruise control applies brakes to ensure the car is keeping a safe distance. Similarly automatic braking steps in when the vehicle is tailgating or about to collide with an object or another vehicle. The lane-keeping function manages steering in a way that it stays in its lane.

There are new technological advances every day. Another project that is being tested at the moment is [tp lang=”en” only=”y”]Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication[/tp][tp not_in=”en”]Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication[/tp] (V2V). This project will help us to go one step closer to autonomous cars. In addition, satellite technology and on-board computers help to warn drivers of dangers ahead, provide road congestion reports and so on.

Probably another direction auto insurance companies will need to take is to look at these advancements a lot closely. Already some insurers are offering additional discounts for advance safety features in cars. It is probably fair to say that underwriters will move from basing their premium calculations on mainly drivers to shifting emphasis towards vehicles, their usage and environmental factors.