Will the neighboring California insurance marketplace be next?
After new Google driverless cars passed a number of tests and achieving set requirements in the state, the Nevada auto insurance industry is now facing a first in the country opportunity to cover the vehicles.
The state is the first to license this new technology in the country.
After years of development, they have now been able to achieve the following goals, which were set by the Nevada auto insurance officials. These include:
• A safety plan submission
• A self-driving technology description submission
• A combined 10,000 miles of driving time
• The submission for a hiring and training plan for drivers of these vehicles
Once the Google driverless cars passed the tests, they were provided with special license plates.
The red plates will be unique to this type of vehicle and will mean that they are legal to be self-driven. Equally, though, it is still unlikely that consumers will be seeing the vehicles on dealer lots anytime soon. That said, they don’t appear to be as far into the distant future as they did only a few years – or even a few months – ago.
Americans have come to accept that air travel is a mainstream way of arriving at a destination and that computers are capable of taking over that form of transportation. It is likely that we will also one day be able to hand over the wheel to a computer to drive our cars. Before that happens, though, it will be important for some setbacks to be overcome. Unfortunately, some of them will inevitably be collisions.
The Nevada auto insurance industry is going to need to decide what happens if a self-driving car collides with another one, or with one driven by a human. The odds are that even if the human was at fault, the technology will still receive some negative press and some public backlash.
It is likely that neighboring states, such as the California insurance marketplace, will also need to start thinking about these eventualities, as the drivers from one state will surely want to cross over into the next.
Even if the technology is years away from reaching consumers’ driveways, this is certainly a wakeup call for the Nevada auto insurance sector, as they begin to consider what types of policies – and rates – will be necessary for this coverage.