It's a 3x effect for insurance agencies: 1) Google/Waymo doesn't buy insurance for their vehicles 2) Waymo vehicles are much less likely to cause accidents 3) Waymo vehicles actively avoid being hit and calm traffic overall
Is having insurance not legally required? Do they just pay out when there's an accident where they injure someone?
When I was much younger, I worked for a couple companies that had (what I would consider) large fleets of vehicles, and they all were insured through an insurance company. I guess I just assumed that's how it was. I wasn't aware self-insuring was a possibility. Thanks.
Often self insure means they still pay an insurance company to handle the paperwork, but when there is a claim the company pays it.
For health care, a lot of large companies technically have say Anthem or whatever but the company pays out all of the claims and it's just administered by Anthem. So you may have seen a similar thing where all claims were handled by say Geico but it's not Geico's pot of money paying out claims.