I think what will change is... take a South Floridian car insurance car payment. You can pay $200/$300mo for 60 months and never need it, because based on statistics, everybody else in your area is getting into accidents with uninsured motorists.
Less accidents happening around you, insurance claims write fewer checks for claims, your payment (which is basically a savings account contributing to "when you might need it" in my eyes) should be lower.
There are other things your insurance covers, like an uninsured driver hitting your car, theft, a tree falling on your car, etc. These things will still happen to self driving cars.
> How am I liable for an accident caused by my self driving car, though?
Because you failed to maintain the vehicle in a safely operable condition. Now, if s manufacturers defect contributed to that failure, the manufacturer may also be liable, but that doesn't mean you aren't liable, and the manufacturer is going to claim and try to prove that that isn't the case.
In practice that sounds impossible. Am I supposed to audit the code? I probably don't even get to see the code, and even if I did we don't have any even theoretical way to audit the neural network parts.
But you can audit tires, physical damage to sensors, cameras, etc so if an accident were to be caused by failure to brake caused by rain and bald tires, that is entirely your fault. ABS will only take you so far.
> In practice that sounds impossible. Am I supposed to audit the code?
I know HN has a software bias, but a self-driving car is not a blob of disembodied code, and the code that is present relies on the state of hardware for proper operation.
IMO Id rather have the ability to buy my own insurance and have various choices of coverage. Nothing needs to change.