Driverless Technologies and Their Effects on Insurers and the State: An Initial Assessment

This article explores the impacts of new auto technologies and their financial effects on insurance markets, a set of complementary services, and state revenues. We use data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatality Analysis Reporting System, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Census Bureau to create a data set that links industry and state finance variables to a set of variables related to driving. Our purpose in this initial assessment is to estimate the sensitivity of these financial variables to different indices of driving including the number of drivers, the number of cars licensed per year, and the number of vehicle miles driven. The resulting estimates are used to create elasticities to show how sensitive each is to changes brought about by the new technologies.