Why would insurance need to get more expensive for manual drivers as self-driving adoption increases?
Ideally, insurance cost for self-driving cars would just be lower than insurance costs now (proportional to risk), and even insurance costs for manual drivers might go down because their risk decreases as well.
I think it's more about when the market is still majority manual. 20% self driving might see premiums for manual cars go up significantly because manual drivers would have more at fault accidents per mile than before (assuming the same rate of accidents, but most accidents with a self driving car are the manual driver's fault).
There will also be things like not having DWIs and even cheap parking (since the car can drive away and park) that'll net out for self driving. And feedback loops there- the same size police force only pulling over manual cars from a smaller and smaller pool.
> assuming the same rate of accidents, but most accidents with a self driving car are the manual driver's fault
This is a very shaky assumption in my view; more realistic would be (to me):
1) Overall accident rate reduction even for manual drivers
2) Reduced damage in accidents even for manual drivers
3) Slight increase in "at-fault" allocation toward manual drivers
It seems very likely to me that those would result in net favorable effects even for manual drivers.
I believe a lot of driving will move to full auto once viable, but not all of it because lots of people like to drive recreationally, and I simply don't see insurance rates for manual drivers spiking out of control-- just compare insurance pricing for less-safe vintage cars, which is also perfectly reasonable.
Insurance premiums are higher for higher risk individuals/circumstances and lower for lower risk ones.
If automatic driving lowers the floor of risk due to even lower risk than even the lowest risk human driver, insurance premiums will adjust to compensate and accomodate the now higher risk human driver compared to the now lower risk computer driver.
And here's the kicker: Insurance premiums don't even have to increase for the human drivers. Once owners of automatic driving cars pay even cheaper premiums, that becomes the new baseline for "cheap" car insurance and the rest should be plainly obvious. "Want lower rates? Get an automatic driving car."
I'm not disputing that insurance for full-auto cars is likely to be cheaper in the future, but I don't believe that manual driving insurance will ever get "cripplingly" expensive-- it might even go down compared to now thanks to reduced accident rates (contributed by full-auto cars).
Also compare vintage-car insurance (which are in many cases drastically less safe): Pricing is perfectly viable there and has been for decades.
Ideally, insurance cost for self-driving cars would just be lower than insurance costs now (proportional to risk), and even insurance costs for manual drivers might go down because their risk decreases as well.