环境影响研究无人驾驶车辆关于未来25年的汽车保险业，读起来就像恐龙灭绝前夕的警告。巴克莱银行（Barclays）去年9月发布的一份报告称：“这是一次地震性的转变。”。毕马威一个月后宣称，传统的保险业务模式将“翻天覆地”。
汽车保险业的主要游说团体保险信息研究所（III）的首席精算师詹姆斯•林奇反驳说：“汽车保险的死亡被大大夸大了。”。“很多未来派的报道都是在现实面前脱颖而出的。”
诚然，新车的保险赔付额下降了7%以上，新车配备了消除盲点的摄像头、在驾驶员无法识别即将发生的车祸情况时停车的自动刹车，以及与发展自动驾驶（简称AD）相关的其他安全突破，但保费保持稳定。巴克莱资本（barclayscapital）驻纽约保险分析师杰伊•盖尔布（jaygelb）表示，这意味着汽车保险业可能正进入“利润的黄金时代”。（见自动驾驶车辆索引。）
History backs up such middle-term optimism. When actuaries crank out auto insurance policies, they focus on two basic issues: the frequency of accidents and their severity — how much it will cost the insurer to repair vehicles and mend the injured.
在过去的半个世纪里，由于强制性安全带、安全气囊和液压制动器等创新，事故发生率下降了50%左右。但自1965年以来，偿还索赔的成本飙升了1600%。这是因为汽车零部件和医疗保健的价格上涨速度快于一般通胀率。“因此，汽车保险业要萎缩，索赔频率的下降速度必须远远快于索赔严重程度的通胀率，”III的林奇说。“这不太可能。”
不过，未来学家断言，广告技术带来的安全进步和保险业的混乱将不同于19世纪末汽车问世以来的任何一次。毕马威表示，在未来25年内，事故发生率将下降80%。毕马威报告的合著者杰里•奥尔布赖特（Jerry Albright）表示：“保险公司现在需要关注事故频率的降低，因为它们已经开始影响业务。”。
几家领先的保险公司已经意识到，随着人们放弃个人汽车所有权，转而依赖于被广泛接受的无人驾驶汽车车队，行业面临的风险也越来越大优步或利夫特应用程序。Travelers在2014年年报中警告股东，无人驾驶汽车和共享单车“可能会扰乱当前客户对我们产品的需求，造成承保范围问题，或影响损失的频率或严重程度，我们可能无法有效应对。”
据毕马威精算分析,be a drastic shift from personal auto insurance to policies that cover commercial vehicles as driverless ride-sharing and truck fleets increase their market share. In 2013 personal auto accounted for 87 percent of losses covered by insurance, compared with 13 percent for commercial vehicles. In 2040 commercial vehicle loss coverage will have risen to 28 percent, compared with 58 percent for personal auto. The remaining 14 percent will be taken up by product liability. That category, which is statistically insignificant in today’s auto insurance lines, will grow as manufacturers are held liable for AD product failures. But the bad news for insurers, KPMG says, is that overall loss coverage could fall from $145 billion in 2013 to about $85 billion in 2040. There are several ways this income gap might be bridged. Barclays, in its 2015 report on global auto insurance, suggests there will be a rise over the next couple of decades in policies covering cyberrisks and cyberterrorism as hackers threaten AD commercial fleets by disrupting signals from dispatchers. According to a 2013 report by Boston Consulting Group, enormous troves of data that insurers collect from customers could be profitably used to improve fraud detection in accident claims or to offer one-time policies over mobile phones for vacation activities such as skiing and cycling. For large, diversified insurers, the easiest solution to the threats posed by AD development could be a shift away from auto insurance to other property/casualty lines.
无论如何，保险公司仍有足够的时间制定应对新广告时代的策略。“最终，这对保险业来说可能是毁灭性的，”Keefe，Bruyette&Woods驻巴尔的摩保险分析师Meyer Shields说。“但对于那些正在争夺市场份额的保险公司来说，担心二三十年后的事情是完全没有意义的，因为即使汽车保险业消失了，从那时到现在也有很多钱可以赚。”
另见“无人驾驶汽车，启动引擎.”