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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

Subscriptions for self-driving actually make sense, since the company is probably taking on liability if the car crashes or something else goes wrong.

Just makes sense for self driving to have a "combined" subscription that is or functions as insurance.

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It is called insurance and is a heavily regulated thing.

Actually I think they're onto something, the company being required to get insurance [too] means they have more financial skin in the game. A crash when the car is being driven by the company's algorithm should be paid for by the company and not the driver. Same as if any other engineering defect causes an accident.

> Actually I think they're onto something, the company being required to get insurance [too] means they have more financial skin in the game.

No, a company that is liable has skin in the game, insurance mitigates rather than enhances that—its the whole point of insurance, swapping out risk for a fixed cost.

OTOH, the insurer then has skin in the game.

In bulk, there's no real difference between the company getting insurance for the user, versus the company being insurance for the user.

Either way, the cost they pay will be directly related to how safe it is. They have almost all the skin in the game.

Insurance as it currently exists makes no sense if the human 'operator' is not actually driving the car.

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