As Lyft Begins Testing Autonomous Cars, Insurance Concerns for California Drivers

The newest company to gain approval for testing autonomous cars in California is ride-hail service, Lyft. This should come as no surprise since the company announced their autonomous car expansion plan earlier this year. Lyft has partnered with companies like Ford to achieve a goal of streamlined and affordable transportation and is just one of many companies that already have or plan on applying for permits to test autonomous cars in California. With the rise of autonomous car usage, California residents need to prepare for insurance concerns and changes.

How safe are autonomous cars?

To date, new autonomous cars have a great safety record with autonomous car companies like Waymo reporting more than 4 million logged miles and few accidents.  According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, self-driving car crash rates are 3.2 per million miles traveled while the national average is 4.2 per million miles driven.

California is currently the only state that requires companies file reports on crashes caused by autonomous cars and according to the California DMV 51 accidents have occurred since 2014. The majority of the crashes reported were rear-end incidents when the autonomous car was struck from behind by another vehicle.

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