Driverless Money

Last week I happened to be contemplating a post having to do with driverless cars when, wouldn’t you know it, I received word that the Bank of England had just started a new blog called Bank Underground, the first substantive post on which had to do with — you guessed it — driverless cars. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried that Bank Underground had stolen my fire. The post, you see, was written by some employees in the Bank of England’s General Insurance Supervision Division, whose concern was that driverless cars might be bad news for the insurance industry. The problem, as the Bank of England’s experts see it, is that cars like the ones that Google plans to introduce in 2020 are much better drivers than we humans happen to be — so much better, according to research cited in the post, that “the entire basis of motor insurance, which mainly exists because people crash, could … be upended.” Driverless cars therefore threaten to “wipe out traditional motor insurance.” It is of course a great relief to know that the Bank of England’s experts are keeping a sharp eye out for such threats to the insurance industry. (I suppose they must be working as we speak on some plan for addressing the dire possibility — let us hope it never comes to this — that cancer and other diseases will eventually be eradicated.) But my own interest in driverless cars is rather different. So far as I’m concerned, the advent of such cars should have us all wondering, ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs