A Safe, VERY Safe Ride in a Self-Driving Ford Fusion
After a 10-minute ride in the back seat of a self-driving Ford Fusion hybrid on a loop around the company's Dearborn research campus, I felt safer than if I had driven myself.
"We follow the speed limit (in this case 25 miles per hour). We drive by the letter of the law," said Schuyler Cohn, one of two Ford autonomous vehicle engineers who served as my fellow passengers. "We're going to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks, maybe a little longer than most people would."
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Q&A with Mercury COO, Kathe Carter: Objective, Unbiased Advice and Service
By Janice Sutton
Kathe Carter is Chief Operating Officer at Mercury Associates, an independent consultancy with a staff of fleet management experts who have an enviable wealth of hands-on management experience and an array of sophisticated analytic tools. We talked with Kathe about some of the more pressing issues confronting fleet managers, one of which is to confidently prove the high value of their fleet operation to senior management.
She says, “If fleets are to control cost and quality, they must look at how they are doing business, regardless of whether they are insourcing or outsourcing the services, and be able to document in concrete ways that the fleet is providing best value services in terms of cost and quality. To do so, fleets need processes to secure information on service delivery requirements that speak to their company needs.
For Some Safety Experts, Uber’s Self-Driving Taxi Test isn’t Something to Hail
Uber’s decision to bring self-driving taxis to the streets of Pittsburgh this week is raising alarms among a swath of safety experts who say that the technology is not nearly ready for prime time.
The unprecedented experiment will launch even though Pennsylvania has yet to pass basic laws that permit the testing of self-driving cars or rules that would govern what would happen in a crash. Uber is also not required to pass along any data from its vehicles to regulators.
Meanwhile, researchers note, autonomous cars have been thrown off by bridges, a particular problem in Pittsburgh, which has more bridges than any other major U.S. city.
Autonomous Vehicles May Reduce US Motor Premiums by More Than 40 Percent by 2050
Aon Benfield, the global reinsurance intermediary and capital advisor of Aon plc, has launched its annual Global Insurance Market Opportunities (GIMO) report, which examines the key areas of potential growth and disruption for insurers.
The report, Riding the Innovation Wave, reveals that if autonomous vehicle technology is adopted at even a moderate pace, US motor pure premiums could decrease by 20 percent by the year 2035 compared to their 2015 levels – and potentially by more than 40 percent by the time that autonomous vehicles reach full adoption in 2050.
With the first commercially available technology expected to hit the road in 2018, the forecast assumes an 81 percent reduction in claims frequency, and an increase in claims severity due to sensor costs and an increased cost of handling product liability claims.
